I return from holiday to find that the alchemy of terrorism has apparently transformed mice into lions. Much ferocious growling and snarling from Tony Blair and Charles Clarke about throwing certain extremist foreign imams and other undesirables out of the country – even, forsooth, amending the Sacred Human Rights Act! ‘

Let no one be in any doubt, the rules of the game are changing,’

declares the Prime Minister. The exodus will start next week, asserts Clarke. Golly!

This has provoked rueful admiration in the US, where Mr Blair’s robust rhetoric since the July bombings has been contrasted with the reluctance by President Bush to identify the enemy. As the Sunday Times reported on August 14:

‘Blair by contrast is getting credit for naming the enemy as Muslim extremists and for criticising the Wahhabi ideology spreading from Saudi Arabia, which remains a leading American ally. Although faulted for allowing “Londonistan” to grow into a haven for terrorism in the first place, the prime minister is regarded as going on the offensive while the Bush government dithers. “Since the London bombings, Tony Blair has emerged as the public face of the global war on terror,” said Nile Gardiner, a former adviser to Baroness Thatcher and who is now based with the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “He is setting the agenda with tough new anti-terrorist measures.”’

Hmmn.

What tough new measures, exactly? The government’s strategy seems to have been to roar very loudly in the hope that certain people will conveniently fall down without it actually having to do anything. Thus it has broadcast through the loudest of megaphones that it is about to arrest certain Muslim extremists and set in train procedures to deport them. The purpose of this curiously open but so far notional exercise appears to be to prompt these said extremists to depart of their own free will, thus avoiding the problem of confronting the dreaded judiciary, Sacred Human Rights Act and so forth. As for the SHRA itself, the government is clearly also hoping that the judges will have grasped the fact that the British public is in a steaming incandescent white-hot rage about this law, and so the judiciary will therefore not put up a fight if anyone is deported, allowing the Act’s fabled Article Three – the bit whose interpretation has prevented us from throwing out of Britain anyone who poses a threat to us if there’s a possibility they may be ill-treated in their home country – to fade into the background without the Act having to be amended.

But as anyone familiar with the Wizard of Oz knows, there is nothing so pathetic as a cowardly lion, whose roar conceals a spineless reluctance to act. Threatening to do things merely advertises weakness. It's only completed actions that count. The government is banking on doing deals with Arab tyrannies to get them to promise not to ill-treat any extremist who it may wish to send their way. This will not work because a) it’s a ridiculous idea and b) the said tyrannies aren’t playing ball. Not surprisingly, the forces of extremism have been gleefully thumbing their noses. Omar Bakri Mohamed, who was said to have fled Britain for Lebanon after Mr Blair announced that ‘the rules of the game are changing,’ subsequently announced that he had merely gone on holiday. Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that his fellow jihadis appear to have the human rights lawyers solidly behind them (now there’s a surprise):

‘Headed by asylum seeker Yasser Al-Siri, who is suspected of involvement in a series of terrorist incidents, they gloated that lawyers would halt any attempt at their removal. The Egyptian, who fled to London more than a decade ago and is wanted in the U.S., said: 'I am not worried about expulsion. My legal team think it is impossible.'

Today, another prospective deportee followed suit with similar defiance. Who can be surprised that such people are gloating? For apart from this legal shadow-boxing with a legal profession that plays ideological human rights politics via a hitherto balefully obstructive judiciary, we also learn the surreal news that the Home Office is apparently appointing as a convener of its new task force to tackle Muslim extremism none other than the media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala. Among Bunglawala’s statements are the following from his time as editor of Trends, a magazine for young Muslims, around twelve years ago:

1)

'The Jews consider themselves to be God’s chosen people - although the blessed prophet Jesus called them the children of the Devil (John 8:44) - and so can do just whatever the hell they like'.

2) He cited claims that the Zionist movement is

'at the core of international banking and commerce'

and observed

'Nonsense? You be the judge'.

3)

‘The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade

[then the chief executive of Channel 4 and now BBC chairman]

and Alan Yentob

[BBC2 controller and friend of Salman Rushdie].

The three are reported to be "close friends… so that's what they mean by a 'free media.'

4) According to an excellent – and deeply alarming – new report by the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity,‘Islam in Britain’, he has written that Hamas is

‘an authentically Islamic movement’

and

‘a source of comfort for Muslims all over the world’

. The report goes on:

‘In the same article, Bunglawala supported the radical Wahabbi Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia, Salman al-‘Awadh and Safar al-Hawali (later linked to Osama bin Laden) and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. In other issues of Trends he attacked the Bin-‘Ali regime in Tunisia while supporting the Islamist Egyptian cleric ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, spiritual leader of the Egyptian Islamic jihad terrorist group, who was arrested by the US authorities for alleged links to the first bombing of the Twin Towers. Bunglawala claimed ‘Umar was simply “calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere”. This looks like clear agreement with the violent Islamist call for jihad by terror anywhere and at any time.’

And as the Telegraph reported:

‘In January 1993, Mr Bunglawala wrote a letter to Private Eye, the satirical magazine, in which he called the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman "courageous" - just a month before he bombed the World Trade Center in New York. After Rahman's arrest in July that year, Mr Bunglawala said that it was probably only because of his "calling on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere". Five months before 9/11, Mr Bunglawala also circulated writings of Osama bin Laden, who he regarded as a "freedom fighter", to hundreds of Muslims in Britain.’

Bunglawala now attempts to dismiss such remarks as ‘indefensible’ youthful indiscretions with which he no longer agrees. But consider his reaction to John Ware’s excellent Panorama broadcast last week, in which the MCB for which Bunglawala is media secretary was exposed as anything but moderate:

‘The Panorama team is more interested in furthering a pro-Israeli agenda than assessing the work of Muslim organisations in the UK…The BBC should not allow itself to be used by the highly placed supporters of Israel in the British media to make political capital out of the July 7th atrocities in London.’

Ah, the world-wide Zionist conspiracy -- the signature obsession of the Muslim fanatic. The claim is, of course, utterly ludicrous. The MCB was eviscerated on that programme by three things: Ware’s robust and well-informed questioning and his refusal to take the supine approach now practised by so many broadcasting journalists; denunciations by Muslims who are appalled by the MCB’s extremism; and the performance of the MCB’s own general secretary, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who condemned himself out of his own mouth by repeatedly refusing to condemn or distance himself from Islamist extremism and indeed even openly supported it. For Bunglawala to claim sinister ‘Zionist’ influence within the BBC is not only – considering the BBC’s generally venomous bile towards Israel – demonstrably ludicrous, but in its irrationality and prejudice gives his own extremist game away in the most public fashion. Appointing such a man to combat Muslim extremism is like appointing Mafia boss John Gotti to advise on crime control.

Nor is this the only recent triumph by our tough-minded, agenda-setting government. It seems to have leaked a suggestion that Islamists might be tried for treason -- only for this to be slapped down instantly by the Lord Chancellor. Meanwhile, Home Office minister Hazel Blears has been making one daft statement after another. First, she suggested to general derision that ethnic minority groups should be renamed as, for example ‘Asian-British’ rather than simply as ‘Asian’, to induce integration. Then she said that the police should not use racial profiling in their operations to prevent a repeat of terror attacks. This was after Ian Johnston, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, suggested that his officers would be concentrating on particular racial groups, and would not ‘waste time searching old white ladies’. Now, it seems, he will have to do precisely that.

All this provoked John Denham, chairman of the Commons committee investigating the bombings, to accuse ministers of bumbling incompetence:

‘The last few days really give the sense that the Government has got into a real state of nerves about the whole thing, displaying a lack of confidence in its own strategy. They have got to get a grip on it very, very quickly, stop floating half-baked ideas and get back to proper cross-party consensus on the serious measures that need to be taken.’

But it’s not just the government that hasn’t got a grip. After the London bombings, the Nottinghamshire police displayed the unerring instinct of the British establishment for solidarity against terror – solidarity with the Muslims. As the BBC reported:

'Police in Nottinghamshire are being given green ribbons to show solidarity with the Muslim community after a rise in racist attacks. The "Good Faith" ribbon is being backed by chief constable Steve Green. Racially motivated attacks in the county have doubled since the attacks on the 7 July, according to figures from Victim Support. Twenty thousand of the ribbons have been made to symbolise belief in Muslims as a people of peace.

'Mr Green said: "We have a huge number of Muslim citizens in Nottinghamshire who are just going around trying to do their everyday business. But they feel intimidated and sometimes ostracised by racist incidents and by the perception that the white community suspects everybody with a brown face of being a suicide bomber. Many people feel fully supportive of the Muslim communities but have no way of showing it and this is a way of allowing them to do that." He added: "Officers will not be compelled to wear these but I have written to my force urging them to take part."'

Following this revelation, a reader sent me the following remarkable message:

‘I thought you may be interested in a quite extraordinary exchange I had with Nottinghamshire Police this morning. Incensed upon reading how the Chief Constable has issued his 4,000 officers with badges pledging support to the Muslim community in the wake of the London bombings I phoned and was put through to his P.A and suggested that perhaps he wouldn't take such a softened and liberal view if his office, like mine, was close to Liverpool St.

‘I was given the usual gumph about how we shouldn't tar one entire community with the same brush etc etc etc...usual liberal/public sector clap- trap. I suggested that they should in fact wear badges showing solidarity with the community under attack by the fanatical Muslims and the poor devils killed and maimed in these latest attacks. Whereupon I was accused of being a racist and that I am not allowed, by law, to air such views.

‘I responded if that was the case, could I say the main bone of contention is that the community at large is basically disappointed that the Muslim community has done little to help the police. The fact that many of its members receive overseas guerrilla training having been recruited in 'back street' (and less back street) mosques indicates a far too lenient approach by the police. They were aghast at my suggestion and made it clear that voicing such an opinion is an offence and I could be in trouble! BINGO, I had them! I suggested they read an article by Tarique Ghaffur, the [Metropolitan] police's most senior Muslim, as I was merely quoting him! Sadly these are the double standards and liberal pussyfooting that has put us in the position we are today. Neither the French nor the Germans face these problems simply because they have applied common sense and a hardline. I feel so much better having taken this action but rather suspect I may be facing a visit by the boys in blue, PC division.’

Are the ‘rules of the game’ changing, in the face of the lethal threat to this country ? Not yet, in morally compromised, politically correct, victim-culture victimised, appeasement-minded Britain; not by a long chalk.

Posted by melanie at August 26, 2005