The following is an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It has some very frank and valid points. I’m curious to know what the response is.
The name of the writer and their background is at the end of the article.
THE latest arrests in Britain and Pakistan relating to another possible terrorist attack by Western-raised Muslims are a pivotal point in the shaping of popular opinion and in setting a course of action for Muslims living in the West.
After the London bombings in July last year there were ceremonial hugs between sheiks and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone; not this time. Nor were there immediate police announcements in Muslim districts to avoid criminalising entire communities. In fact, quite the opposite.
The former Metropolitan Police chief, John Stevens, wrote in the News of the World: “When will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem?”
The tone of opinion and editorial pieces has also become less sympathetic. Even progressive newspapers such as The Guardian have accused Muslims of burying their heads in the sand. To a large extent, it is justified.
Despite repeated terrorist attacks and the normality of radical views in the community, Muslims have done little to speak up about the extremists in their ranks or to condemn the abuses of radical Islamic groups and governments. Rather, their political voices have been limited to cries of discrimination and criticism of the foreign policy of the West.
This reached a climax in Britain this week after a council of Islamic representative groups handed a document to the Government outlining how British foreign policy needed to be altered, based not on any principle, but because it was increasing the appeal of extremism in their communities. Similarly, here the Federation of Islamic Councils has been lobbying the Federal Government to remove Hezbollah from a list of banned terrorist groups.
The claims that terrorism is linked solely to Western foreign policy look increasingly weak, especially since the latest investigations in Britain suggest there were plans for attacks on London from the mid-1990s.
When Muslim voices are heard, victimhood themes and, even worse, ludicrous levels of denial dominate. In London this week, interviews with Muslims revealed that large sections of the community still believe there was no proof that Muslims were behind the London bombings and that there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the World Trade Centre attacks.
Surveys in London’s Daily Telegraph in February found 6 per cent of Muslims believed the London bombings were justified. This equates to about 100,000 people in Britain who could see nothing wrong with the July 7 attacks in their country. Almost 35 per cent were sympathetic. While no similar surveys have been carried out in Australia, I suspect the figures would be little different.
The groups that tend to harbour undesirable views see Islam as morally superior and believe it needs to be instituted at all costs. They take solace in their belief that despite the overwhelming economic, administrative and technological superiority of the West, at least they can hold on to their superior morals.
They create cultural fortresses to ward off the forces of their adopted home while still hoping to benefit from its economic advantages. It is the children who, raised in such cultural fortresses, feel few ties to their country of birth and are vulnerable to radical ideologies offering a higher, supra-national identity.
The time has come for Western Muslims to take a more aggressive stance, to take control of the institutions and commentary that demean them and accept that Islam is full of failures that require action.
Furthermore, there should be a growing sense that while Islam has been instrumental in offering meaning and purpose to billions, it has been more useful as a system of spirituality than as a system of jurisprudence.
This should be the new battleground between radicals, moderates and cultural Muslims, and recent events demand these issues be confronted directly and debated openly.
Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatry registrar who is writing a book that takes a comic look at Muslim life in Sydney, to be published early next year by ABC Books.