There is no doubting the significance of the message to British Muslims by Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain. In a letter sent to every mosque in the country, he urges Muslims to turn in any terrorists in their midst. This is the first time the community has officially recognised it has a problem. This is very welcome. The root of the crisis — young, impressionable Muslim men being incited to violence by extremist preachers — is one which only the Muslim community can address. And Sacranie is also brave, since he will now come under pressure from those same extremists.

Nevertheless, his message is still dismayingly mixed. For he says terror has nothing to do with Islam. The problem lies instead with one or two ‘hotheaded loonies’ making inflammatory statements which are the ‘antithesis of Islam’. Of course, it is important to stress that most British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. But this frightening problem, which threatens not just Jews like myself but people of all faiths and none, can only be addressed if it is properly identified. And Sacranie’s analysis leaves much to be desired.

To begin with, it is contradictory. His letter urges imams to provide ‘correct Islamic guidance …to maintain the peace and security of our country’. But there would have been no need to issue such warnings to every mosque if the problem really was confined to a couple of ‘loonies’. And indeed, relatives of some of the suspects arrested in Tuesday’s anti-terrorism raids claimed they had been brainwashed by preachers in the mosques.

Next, Sacranie says these extremists preach a message of violence that is against the Koran. To make his point, he quotes a paragraph from the Koran which preaches a doctrine against violence: '[That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that] whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind'. But he didn’t quote what comes next in the text: ‘Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off…’ Muslims claim such violence is only to be used in self-defence. But the essence of the problem is that they interpret ‘self-defence’ very broadly to include a long list of grievances against the west. On BBC TV’s Newsnight, Sacranie listed Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine and Bosnia. This came close to excusing terror simply because Muslims were embroiled in such places.

For since Muslims regard it as a grievance if any action is taken against them, regardless of whether they may be in the wrong, this means any action the west takes in legitimate self-defence against Muslim aggression is twisted into a justification for further Muslim violence — which is perceived in those circumstances as a religious duty. Yes, of course there are peaceful, spiritual elements in the Koran which teaches virtues such as tolerance or patience. But these exist side by side with messages of hatred and violence, such as ‘Make war on those who believe not, even if they be people of the Book’, ‘Slay the idolaters wherever you find them’ and numerous other exhortations to fight unbelievers.

The fact is that Islam is the only religion for which jihad, or holy war against all unbelievers, is a duty. That is why it is historically a religion of conquest. True, most religions contain warlike elements. After all, Christianity’s wars of religion in the middle ages were of unconscionable savagery. But those ended when the Reformation separated out church and state and disavowed violent conquest altogether. The big problem for Islam is that it never had a reformation. So the orthodox interpretation of jihad has never been refuted.

For a long time, this was in eclipse. But in the first half of the last century, the call to jihad against all unbelievers was revived by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose doctrines spread to Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is the billions of dollars of Saudi money, in particular, which have in recent years financed an explosion of mosques in Britain and Europe to spread these doctrines which are the recruiting sergeants for terror. Sacranie condemns those who refer to ‘Islamic terrorism’. But since terror is being waged explicitly in pursuit of jihad, that is precisely what it is.

There is no doubt that many moderate Muslims are horrified by what they see as a takeover of their religion by such extremism. The may be from an older generation which was taught a more peaceful interpretation; or they may be not very observant, and so not susceptible to such brainwashing. Nevertheless, they have chosen in the main to bury their heads in the sand. Instead of acknowledging that the problem is rooted in the religion, they deny this and blame instead poverty or alienation.

This is nonsense. There are plenty of poor or oppressed people who don’t resort to terrorism; and many jihadists are highly educated and prosperous. Nor is it confined to isolated comunities: three of those arrested this week live in a multi-ethnic estate in Crawley, West Sussex, support Manchester United and like fish and chips. The cause is not social conditions. It is the hatred being instilled against the west, and the religious duty being imposed to make war upon it. Unless and until that is acknowledged, Muslims will make little headway in addressing this problem.

So what should they be doing? Sacranie’s letter is a start, but frankly this is nowhere near enough. The Muslim community must now remove the source of the contagion, the imams who are preaching incitement, hatred and jihad. Families should be telling the mosque committees to get rid of them. If local community leaders won’t do it, Muslim councillors should be applying some helpful pressure; and if the councillors won’t do it, the government should be telling those mainly Labour councillors to pull their fingers out.

The wider community has a reponsibility too. Increasingly, some Muslims in Britain and around the world are trying to push their religion towards the reformation it so badly needs. They are saying loud and clear that if the problem of Islamic terrorism is to be solved, Islam itself has to change. These people are quite exceptionally brave, but are still very thin on the ground. The wider community should be doing everything in its power to support, protect and finance them and give them a platform to spread their message. And it must stop pretending that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. By saying this, they pull the rug from under the reformers’ feet.

Muslims contribute much of value to this country. They are industrious people who believe in strong families, self-discipline and orderly lifestyles. Their religion is rightly a source of virtue, solace and support. The vast majority are model citizens. Nevertheless, a recent poll suggested that 13 per cent of this two million strong community supported further terrorism against the US, and another 15 per cent didn’t know whether this would be justified or not. These are horrifying numbers. The Muslim community has a very serious problem; and unless it faces up to it properly, all of us — Muslims included — will continue to be at risk.

Posted by melanie at April 1, 2004