Over a quarter of British Muslims have sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo terrorists. That is far too many.
Just because you wouldn’t personally go out and murder people, it doesn’t make you moderate. We cannot turn a blind eye to the fair-weather supporters of terrorism
This morning the BBC published details of a major poll of the attitudes of Britain’s Muslims. The headline on the front of the BBC website linking to the research states: “Muslims ‘oppose cartoon reprisals’”. This of course relates to attitudes within the Muslim community towards the** recent Charlie Hebdo attacks**.
It’s a reassuring headline. It’s also wrong. Many Muslims - a majority - do indeed utterly oppose the murderous killings in Paris. But a very, very large number of Muslims don’t. Presented with the statement “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris”, 27 seven percent agreed with the statement. A further 2 per cent refused to answer the question. And an additional eight percent said they were unsure whether they had some sympathy or not.
That is a shocking figure. And an utterly shaming one for Britain’s Muslim community. If this poll is accurate, over a quarter of British Muslims overtly sympathise with the motives of those responsible for the cold blooded murder of 16 journalists, police officers and Jews.
Below the report is an article by BBC Today program reporter Sima Kotecha. It begins: “Islam is a religion of peace and love - not violence: sentiments that have been expressed numerous times here in Bradford. Out of the dozens of people I’ve spoken to, an overwhelming majority have said they’re angry that their interpretation of Islam has been eclipsed by an extreme ideology that is too often projected in the media."
That statement - and those sentiments - are simply not compatible with the BBC’s own research. In a separate finding, the BBC found 68 per cent of Muslims believed “acts of violence against those who published such images [of the prophet Mohammed] could never be justified”. Which means 32 per cent of those questioned take a different view. Another question asked respondents if they agreed with the statement “Muslim clerics who preach that violence against the West can be justified are out of touch with mainstream opinion”. 49 per cent agreed. Meaning again, that a majority of Muslims either disagree or sit on the fence.
All of this raises two serious questions. The first relates to the BBC’s reporting. Let’s set aside their use of the word “reprisal” in the headline (reprisal for what, exactly?). Imagine if the BBC had commissioned a poll in the wake of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and that poll had found 27 per cent of white Britons agreed with the statement “I have some sympathy for the motives behind his stabbing”. Imagine if, in an additional finding, 32 per cent of white Briton’s refused to endorse the statement “acts of unprovoked violence against black men can never be justified”.
Rightly, there would be outrage at those findings. And the BBC would be leading the charge. The focus, correctly, would be on the large number of people who expressed sympathy with the attacks. We would certainly not have religious propaganda masquerading as news analysis in the middle of the BBC’s report.
But a much fundamental question relates to the poll’s actual findings. There is no point continuing to stick our heads in the sand: a large number of British Muslims think the Charlie Hebdo attacks were in some way justified. People may not want to accept that. I don’t want to accept it. But it’s a fact.
We are going to have to start to reassess what we mean by “moderate Islam”. At the moment, we essentially define a moderate Muslim as any Muslim who doesn’t go around blowing things up, or who doesn’t go round overtly advocating other people should blow things up. It’s ludicrously simplistic, sickeningly patronising, and actually represents a form of inverted racism.
More importantly, it also has the practical effect of marginalising and undermining the significant number of genuinely moderate Muslims who want nothing to with the “I wouldn’t have done it myself, but…” Charlie Hebdo apologists within their community.
If you think the Paris killings were justified - in any way - then you’re not a moderate. By definition, you’re an extremist. Fine, you’re not a terrorist. But just because you wouldn’t personally walk into a Jewish supermarket and start indiscriminately murdering people does not of itself make you a case study in moderation. We set the bar a little higher than that.
Over a quarter of British Muslims have some sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo attacks. That is sickening, reprehensible and unacceptable. And we have to say so. Rather than patting the other three quarters who don’t have sympathy on the head, and saying “Well done. You’re the good Muslims”.
Two weeks ago I took part in a debate on free speech, hosted by the Islamic Education and Research Academy. It was a good discussion, well attended, with an almost exclusively Muslim audience. Near the end, one audience member began to defend the killing of apostates. I challenged him, as did the other non-Muslim panelists. None of the Muslim panelists challenged him. No members of the audience challenged him. Instead, when he’d finished defending the murder of apostates, a significant section of the audience applauded him.
It’s not good enough. It’s not good for people inside and outside the Muslim community to continue to turn a blind eye to the extremism that continues to fester in the heart of the Muslim community. It’s not good enough for Muslims to keep delivering vacuous homilies about “the religion of peace” when surveys show 27 per cent of Muslims have sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo murderers. And it’s not good enough for us to deploy spurious moral relativism in a misguided attempt to place extremism behind a shield of religious tolerance.
The BBC is wrong. Many Muslims have sympathy with the Charlie Hebdo killings. Far too many.