The Guardian’s mammoth special investigation into the attitudes of young British Muslims threw up some fascinating insights — both from what was said and what was left out.

First was what the Guardian itself thought sufficiently striking to headline on its own front page:

‘British Muslims want Islamic law and prayers at work’.

A clear majority said they want Sharia law in civil cases relating to their own community, while no fewer than 88 per cent want schools and workplaces to accommodate Muslim prayer times — five times daily (although a reader observes that two of these prayer times would be before and after work) — into the normal working day. Such responses indicate an unwillingness to accept the status of a minority faith and by extension the rights of a majority culture to express its own values and traditions. It displays instead a desire to force the majority culture to adapt itself to minority practices, something required by no other minority in Britain. There is a great difference between allowing a minority to practise its own culture as an add-on to or opt-out from majority practice, and forcing majority practice to be changed or be overruled by minority requirements. True, respondents said that any penalties should be in accordance with British (sic) law. But Sharia law on, say, family structure or the status of women is inimical to English law and its principles. It is in this context that one has to set the view from 40 per cent that they needed to do more to integrate into mainstream British culture. The majority in this survey suggest they require British culture to adapt to Islam.

As might be predicted, most young Muslims involved in the Guardian’s discussions complained about ‘Islamophobia’ and widespread misapprehensions about their religion. Although there was a degree of self-criticism, with one or two saying things like they had a duty to inform the police of any terrorist plot, or that Muslim communities were indeed introverted, most appeared to lack any insight and suggested instead they were being victimised by British society, claiming they were made to feel they didn’t fit in, or that Muslims had been ‘targeted’ by the government’s anti-terror drive. The Foreign Office minister Fiona McTaggart was actually booed when she said Muslims were not victims of the government’s foreign policy or anti-terror laws.

All this provoked Sarfaz Manzoor to write a courageous article lamenting such lack of self-awareness:

‘This reluctance to be self-critical may be partly a result of feeling embattled and not wanting to wash dirty laundry in front of others, but I think it is also owing to a failure of creative thinking from British Muslims. Put simply, there is a tendency to want to have the cultural cake and eat it too: to say yes we are different and no we are not different at the same time. The fact is that many people in the UK and elsewhere have concerns about British Muslims, and to just argue that they are misguided will neither reassure them nor provide a route towards conciliation. Too many of the self-proclaimed leaders among British Muslims seem more keen on furthering other agendas of politics, self-interest and self-promotion than in chiselling away at the tough questions. That requires a more rigorous degree of thinking and, thankfully, there were some signs of it in the hall. The woman who said: "There is racism and sexism in our community, we do it to ourselves"; the man who added that "Islam does not have a monopoly on morality"; and the many participants who said people are entitled to more than one identity.’

Manzoor concluded that the fact that the forum took place at all was a sign of progress. But quite frankly, there seems to be more progress taking place among young British Muslims than among the terrified PC clones at the Guardian. For they failed to put to their respondents the really hard questions. For example: do they believe it is the duty of Muslims to ensure that the majority culture adapts to the principles of Islam? Do they approve of the fact that the penalty for apostasy from Islam is death? What do they think of the fact that, according to the Cabinet office, no fewer than 10,000 British Muslims actively support al Qa’eda? Do they think Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state? Do they believe there is a Jewish conspiracy linking Washington and Jerusalem? And exactly what are they taught in the mosques about the west, America, Israel and the Jews?

Now, answers to questions like these would have been really illuminating. But it is not surprising the Guardian never asked them. For among the panellists they invited to discuss these issues was Tariq Ramadan, who the paper described as

‘one of the most revered Muslim scholars in the world’

.

Ramadan is a descendant of Hasan al Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the extreme sect which fathered modern Islamofascism. In August, the US revoked Ramadan’s entry visa on the grounds that he had connections with terrorist activity. He has vehemently denied this. But this is what the Islam scholar Daniel Pipes has revealed of Ramadan’s history:

• ‘He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam." • Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris. • Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999. • Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan. • Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. • He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement. And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien: • Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison. • Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.’

Ramadan believes that Islam should replace western civilisation. He wants western culture Islamicised, gradually excising all references to Christianity and Judaism altogether. He has been accused of outright prejudice against Jews. One writer has said of him:

‘His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the Islamification of modernity’

(‘Esprit et Vie,’ February 17, 2000).

This is the man to whom the Guardian turned to pronounce on

‘how to accommodate diversity and equality within a western democracy’

. How long will western democracy last when its proponents turn to such a man to answer such a question? And where dos this leave ‘mainstream’, ‘non-extremist’ Islam when someone like Ramadan is ‘one of the most revered Muslim scholars in the world’?

Posted by melanie at December 1, 2004