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Under siege: Muslims in Britain
After the horrific bombings in London on 7 July,
suspicion and blame was levelled at the whole Muslim community. Racist
attacks and police harassment have increased. The government is pushing
through increasingly repressive legislation. HANNAH SELL reports.
"IN THE END", declared Tony Blair, terrorism "can
only be taken on and defeated by the [Muslim] community itself". This
declaration, made two days after the 7/7 London bombings, marked the
beginning of a wave of propaganda from the media and capitalist
politicians effectively laying the blame for the bombings at the feet of
the Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims.
The government responded in this way for several
reasons. Firstly, and most immediately, was its desperation to divert
attention from the link between the brutal occupation of Iraq and the
London bombings. Secondly, not for the first time, New Labour reacted to
the racist campaign of the right-wing media by capitulating to it.
Finally, New Labour is, of course, proposing a raft of highly draconian
repressive legislation, all in the name of ‘fighting terror’. This is
easier to implement in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion against
Muslims which government propaganda is tacitly encouraging, despite its
attempts to promote Muslim spokespeople and superficial talk about
anti-racism.
These new laws will not prevent terrorism any more
than draconian legislation in the past defeated the Irish Republican
Army (IRA). However, they are resulting in the erosion of democratic
rights, like the right to organise and demonstrate. The Terrorism Act of
2000 has already been used against anti-war campaigners, including
protests at military bases at Fairford and Welford. Blair also
threatened to use it to put protesters at the Gleneagles G8 summit under
house arrest although, on this occasion, the threat was not acted on.
In the short term, there is no doubt that ethnic
minorities, and particularly Muslims, are suffering the worst
consequences of increased police repression and the new anti-terror
laws. In London, for example, from 2001 to 2002 there was a 41% increase
in ‘stop and search’ against Asians by the Metropolitan Police and the
figures have rocketed again since 7/7. The police killing of Jean
Charles de Menezes means that now for every Muslim in Britain, and every
person who the police could conceivably see as Muslim, the fear of being
shot on sight has now been added to the fear of future bombings we all
suffer, plus the fear of increased racism.
This will inevitably lead to further anger and
alienation amongst Muslims who will have little trust that only those
actually involved in planning terrorist attacks will be targeted. No
wonder that, according to Home Office statistics, only 1% of those
arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (the draconian
anti-terrorist legislation that was supposed to thwart the IRA), were
convicted of any crime. The legislation introduced in the wake of 9/11
has been no different – of the 700 arrested only 17 have been convicted
of any offence, and only three have been convicted of offences relating
to terrorism. This is despite the post-9/11 legislation lessening the
prosecution’s ‘burden of proof’.
In addition to increased state repression, the other
obvious consequence of the bombings for Muslims in Britain has been an
increase in racism. According to the police, race hate crimes are up
600% from this time last year. At least two people have been murdered in
racist attacks. While the increased racism affects all ethnic
minorities, it is Muslims who feel particularly targeted.
The pressure being exerted on Muslim communities by
these events has brought to the fore tensions that have long existed.
Questions about which way forward for Britain’s Muslims are being
debated in Muslim communities up and down the land. Two thirds of
Muslims have considered leaving Britain, according to a recent Guardian/ICM
survey. However, for most this is not a practical option. Two thirds of
all Muslims in Britain are under 25, the vast majority of whom have been
brought up in Britain. While there is undoubtedly widespread alienation
from British society, a place where they are discriminated against both
because of their colour and religion, nonetheless, for many Britain is
also the only home they know.
Poverty and prejudice
THE QUESTION FACING the majority of Britain’s
Muslims is not how to leave the country, but how to live here. The
events of the last three months have intensified the discrimination
faced by the majority of Muslims, but they did not create it. As a whole
Muslims are amongst the poorest in British society. One in seven
economically active Muslims are unemployed, compared with one in 20 for
the wider population. Higher education does not overcome the obstacles
Muslims face. One quarter of Muslim graduates are unemployed at a time
when overall official unemployment stands at 4.5%. The two biggest
Muslim communities in Britain, those originating in Pakistan and
Bangladesh, are particularly impoverished. In 1999, for example, 28% of
white families lived below the poverty line compared with 41% of
Afro-Caribbean families and 84% of Bangladeshi families.
The history of Muslims in Britain has been one of
poverty and discrimination. Historically, however, the discrimination
against Muslims in Britain has been only one of the many facets of the
racism of capitalist society. In different forms, racism has been an
intrinsic part of capitalism since its inception. Over the last decade,
and particularly since the horror of 11 September 2001, there is no
doubt that anti-Muslim prejudice – Islamaphobia - has risen
dramatically. While other forms of racism remain, Muslims face the
sharpest manifestation of discrimination in Britain today. The
government’s participation in brutal wars of subjugation against
Afghanistan and Iraq – both majority Muslim countries – with all the
accompanying propaganda denigrating the peoples of those countries, has
inevitably further increased Islamaphobia.
The segregation of Muslim communities is also
increasing. While many Muslims live in ‘integrated’ areas, this
sometimes disguises strong elements of segregation, especially for young
people, with some streets being for whites and others for Asians, with
abuse and the threat of violence if the borders are crossed. In other
areas, particularly in some of the towns of the North West where
industry has been destroyed, de facto segregation has gone a long way.
How can increased anti-Muslim prejudice and racism
be challenged? How can New Labour’s foreign policy be effectively
opposed? It is absolutely clear to the vast majority of Muslims in
Britain that the profoundly mistaken terrorism of 7/7 offers no way
forward. In 2004, 73% of Muslims in Britain said they opposed further
attacks on the US by Al-Qa’ida. In the most recent opinion polls, 86%
have said that it is unacceptable to use violence for political ends in
all circumstances.
Socialists condemn the London bombings, as we
condemned 9/11 and all similar attacks which result in the horrific
killing of ordinary people. However, we completely oppose the simplistic
argument of Blair and others that the bombers can be explained just by
describing them as in the grip of an ‘evil ideology’ which Muslims can
simply ‘drive out’ of their communities. Of course, anyone who could
carry out such acts will be considered ‘evil’. However, this is the
first time suicide bombings have taken place in Europe and, as the
police and government accept, it is possible it could happen again. It
is inadequate to use ‘evil’ as an explanation for this change.
The factors that have pushed some of the most
alienated Muslim youth in Britain to carry out the horrendous London
bombings include their own experience of economic deprivation and racism
and the suffering of Muslims worldwide. It is estimated that more than
100,000 civilians have died in Iraq, and the estimates of the death toll
in Chechnya range from 80,000 to 250,000. One of the men arrested for
the 21 July attempted bombing, Hussain Osman, described how he and his
cohorts had watched hours of footage of Iraq, including the killing of
innocent civilians and grieving widows and children. Videos of this
kind, showing the nightmare of Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan, are bound
to enrage the many young Muslims who see them. The vast majority do not
conclude that the solution is to carry out terrorist acts in Britain,
but they do feel anger that the government grieves the dead in London
while continuing to take part in the killing in Iraq.
Imperialist hypocrisy
IN REALITY, BUSH’S regime went into Iraq partly to
recover its prestige in the wake of 9/11 by flexing its military might,
but also to follow the dream of cheap oil for US imperialism. For
millions of Muslims worldwide, however, Iraq, along with the plight of
Palestinians and the devastation being wreaked in Chechnya, is
understandably perceived as a war on their religion.
This perception can only be added to by the
discussion on Islam in the media since 7/7. Blair and others have talked
about mobilising the ‘true and moderate face of Islam’, and
commentators, including Salman Rushdie, have suggested that these
strands are currently weak because Islam never went through a
‘reformation’. The processes that Rushdie and others are referring to
actually took place in Europe long after the struggles of the
‘reformation’: it was with the enlightenment that science, law and
philosophy were able to develop independently of the church.
However, Martin Luther’s ‘reformation’ was part of a
process that eventually led to the bourgeois democratic revolution – the
overthrow of reactionary feudalism and the development of capitalism –
and the enlightenment was an intrinsic part of that revolutionary
process. While this was an enormously progressive development
historically, capitalism today has long since ceased to play a
progressive role. On huge swathes of the planet the national
bourgeoisies, cowering before the imperialism of the major capitalist
powers and terrified of the working class and poor masses of their own
countries, have proved incapable of carrying out the tasks of the
bourgeois democratic revolution. This is a task, as Leon Trotsky first
explained in his theory of permanent revolution a century ago, which now
falls on the shoulders of the working class, with the support of the
poor peasantry, as part of the struggle for socialism.
While there is a sliver of truth in that Islam never
had an equivalent of the ‘reformation’, this fact alone gives an
entirely erroneous impression. Islam was never a centralised religion in
the way that pre-reformation Christianity was. The Catholic Church,
stemming from its adoption as the religion of the Roman empire, became a
key pillar of feudalism. Islam, by contrast, played a much more varied
role and was frequently far more liberal than the Christianity that
existed in the same era, particularly when it came to giving rights to
the followers of other religions.
More importantly, far from being, as Rushdie
suggests, a force that can assist with an ‘Islamic reformation’,
imperialism has always been prepared to lean on the most reactionary
feudal forces, particularly in the neo-colonial world. For example,
British imperialism, when it was consolidating its colonial rule of
India, murdered or deported the key representatives of Sufism (a much
more socially ‘liberal’ strand of Islam which had led movements of the
poor masses against feudal lords) and ensured they were replaced with
more ‘conservative’ elements who were prepared to play an active role in
supporting colonial rule.
Today, rhetoric against ‘Islamic extremism’ plays an
important role in the propaganda of US and British imperialism. However,
it belies reality. Just as in the past, it is simply not true that
imperialism opposes conservative and reactionary strands of Islam. On
the contrary, US imperialism has a long history of working with the
deeply conservative Wahhabi Saudi regime.
Al Qa’ida’s roots lie in US imperialism’s funding of
right-wing Islamic organisations as a bulwark against Stalinism,
particularly during the Afghan war. It is no coincidence that Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan, two of the main countries in which Al Qa’ida has a
base, were used by US imperialism for the building of a 50,000-strong
mercenary army to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Madrasas
(the Islamic schools now being implicated by the press in the London
bombings) were set up across Pakistan as part of imperialism’s drive to
provide Islamic ‘cannon fodder’ for its proxy war in Afghanistan. Having
defeated the collapsing Soviet Union, however, the jihadis turned their
attention to driving out Western imperialism. It is as a result of these
processes that Al Qa’ida developed. Equally in Iraq, the US and
British-backed constitution enshrines many aspects of Islamic law.
Community ‘leaders’
JUST AS THE criteria of the imperialist powers
internationally for their cooperation with Islamic forces has nothing to
do with the latter’s ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ outlook, but only their
usefulness in furthering the interests of imperialism, the same is true
of Blair’s attitude to Islamic figures in Britain.
When it was elected in 1997, the New Labour
government moved to complete the setting up of the Muslim Council of
Britain (MCB), a process which the previous Tory government had begun.
The ruling class was, and is, worried about the potential instability
that could be created by the alienation of many Muslims from British
society, and this was a conscious attempt to develop ‘spokespeople’ for
the Muslim community who, it was hoped, would act to cut across
alienation and build support for the government amongst Muslims. Other
measures were also taken, including four Muslims being given seats in
the House of Lords.
After 2001, with the riots that took place in the
North West of England and 9/11, increasing the social stability of the
Muslim community via the MCB and other figures became even more
important for the government, and for the ruling class as a whole. The
MCB has loyally played its part by, for example, virtually calling for a
Labour vote in the most recent general election. At a time when Muslims
were breaking with Labour en-masse, Inayat Bunglawala, MCB spokesman,
explained that Muslims were angry over the Iraq war but went on to say:
"If we take a policy-by-policy look, it appears the Labour party are
offering more". Others, such as Lord Ahmed, have been anxious to
praise the British establishment’s attitude to Muslims, declaring that
it is "more welcoming to Islam than any other country in Europe".
It is this willingness to praise New Labour and the
British ruling class that has led to the elevation of these individuals,
rather than them representing either ‘moderate’ strands of Islam, or
having a real base in Muslim communities. The MCB certainly does not
represent the ‘moderate’ strands of Islam that Blair claims he wishes to
promote. On the contrary, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the MCB, and
recently knighted by New Labour, has links to Jamaat-i-Islami, a
Pakistani party based on a highly reactionary type of political Islam.
In April 2001 he stated that Osama bin Laden was a ‘holy warrior’.
However, because he is prepared to act as a spokesperson for New Labour
within Britain’s Muslim communities, it is quite prepared to turn a
blind eye to his ideas. Whilst the government’s proposed laws on
‘glorifying terrorism’ would certainly leave Sacranie open to
prosecution, it is most unlikely he will be charged!
Nor are the government’s chosen spokespeople
particularly representative of Britain’s Muslims. As Muslim Labour
peeress Lady Uddin admitted, loyalty to her party and credibility among
ordinary Muslims are becoming ever harder to combine. In contrast to
Lady Uddin, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) has felt the need to
keep its distance from the government and to protest at its attempts to
blame Muslims for 7/7. Osama Saeed, a spokesperson for MAB, explained in
The Guardian: "I’ve found it strange that many Muslim leaders have
offered to look deep within our community now. It’s a tacit acceptance
of negligence that I simply do not accept. The prime minister has of
course welcomed this attitude. Indeed he has led from the front,
ratcheting up the rhetoric against Muslims, laying the responsibility
solely on us".
MAB played a significant role in the anti-war
movement and has taken a different electoral approach to the MCB’s
implied support for Labour in recent elections. MAB called, for example,
for a vote for George Galloway of Respect in Bethnal Green and Bow, East
London, as well as for some other Respect candidates in the general
election. However, it did not support Respect in every seat where they
stood – and it also supported a number of Liberal Democrat, Scottish
National Party, and New Labour candidates. Its criteria were based on
the attitude that those candidates took on Iraq, Palestine, religious
hatred legislation, and attacks on civil liberties. What was not taken
into account was the attitude of the candidates on any other issues. To
give one example, Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate MAB supported in
Tooting, South London, had been responsible for the privatisation of
council housing on Wandsworth council. And particularly where the
candidate was a Muslim, their record was not always flawless even on the
basis of MAB’s limited criteria. Mohammed Sarwar, Labour candidate for
Glasgow Govan, for example, while he voted against the invasion of Iraq
before the war started, has since voted with the government on almost
all votes relating to Iraq.
A Muslim bloc?
MAB BELIEVES IT is possible for Muslims to further
their interests in Britain by voting as a bloc for different parties on
a tactical basis. It explains this quite explicitly, hailing, for
example, the June 2004 European elections as being "probably the first
time ever that a Muslim voting bloc has been successfully mobilised on
the national level". Of course, Britain’s Muslims are not a homogenous
bloc. It is estimated that they come from 56 different ethnic
backgrounds and speak almost 100 different languages. In addition, they
come from different class backgrounds. For example, while the majority
of Muslims are amongst the poorest in British society, there are 5,400
Muslim millionaires in Britain - most of whom made their fortunes
exploiting other Muslims.
It is inevitable that different sections of Muslims
will look at ways to band together in the face of increased Islamaphobia.
However, even if a ‘Muslim bloc’ could be achieved, it would not be able
to win economic and social equality for Britain’s Muslims. Muslims make
up 2.8% of the population in Britain. Even acting as one cohesive group
there is clearly a limit to the power they could wield. More
importantly, no amount of pressure will result in British capitalism
lifting the mass of Britain’s Muslim population permanently and fully
out of poverty. Capitalism is a system based on the drive for profit of
the big corporations; profit which, in the final analysis, arises from
the exploitation of the working class and poor masses. Worldwide in the
course of the last 15 years capitalism has attempted to restore its
profits by driving down the living conditions of working people. Britain
has been at the forefront of this process. According to the Institute of
Public Policy Research, the richest 10% in Britain now own 54% of
national wealth, up from 47% under the last Tory government. Those at
the very top, the richest 1%, have seen their share of wealth rise even
faster, from 17% to 23% over roughly the same period. For comparison,
the bottom 50% now own only 7% of Britain’s resources. The poorest
sections of the working class, which include the majority of Britain’s
Muslims, have borne the brunt of this process.
Britain’s ruling class is undeniably anxious about
the potential for social instability that an alienated and overwhelming
poor Muslim population creates. It is attempting therefore to develop a
layer of Muslim community ‘leaders’, including the MCB and the handful
of Muslim MPs who, they hope, will act as a stabilising force. However,
it would be a mistake to imagine that these measures will take the mass
of Muslims one single step forward. The policy is very similar to the
attempts to develop a black middle class via the race-relations
industry, after the inner-city riots in the early 1980s. This did
nothing to lift working-class blacks out of poverty. It was a copy, ‘on
the cheap’, of the attempts of the US, the richest capitalist class on
the planet, to develop a black middle class. The US succeeded in this to
a far greater degree than in Britain. Black politicians, media
commentators and celebrities are now commonplace in the US. However, as
New Orleans has so graphically displayed to the world, dire poverty
remains the reality for the mass of blacks in the US.
According to the UN, if current trends were
completely reversed in Britain from now until 2010, so that the incomes
of the poor rose by 3.7% while those of the rich rose by 0.4%, child
poverty would only be cut from 23% to 17%. Such a mild measure would not
come close to lifting Muslims out of poverty. But no amount of pressure
from a ‘Muslim bloc’, unless it is linked to the wider struggles of the
working class, will force British capitalism, or the politicians who act
in its interests, to carry it out.
The false idea of a ‘Muslim bloc’ is also adopted by
the leadership of Respect, particularly the Socialist Workers’ Party and
George Galloway MP. In the general election, Respect received some very
good votes, but these were exclusively in areas with large Muslim
populations. The Socialist Party called for a vote for Respect – a party
that demands bringing the privatised utilities back into public
ownership, an £8 an hour minimum wage, and ending the occupation of
Iraq. However, if Respect continues to develop so that it is seen
largely as ‘a Muslim party’ which does not address the needs of other
sections of the working class – as, unfortunately, has been the case up
until now – it could push other sections of the working class away and
reinforce racist ideas, whilst simultaneously strengthening the
incorrect idea of ‘Muslim bloc’ politics.
Class unity in action
THE ONLY EFFECTIVE way for Muslims to fight to
improve their conditions is to find common cause with other sections of
the working class. This was instinctively understood by Muslims in the
past, when they supported the Labour Party. At that time, while Labour
had a capitalist leadership, nonetheless, it had a working-class base
and was rightly seen as "less racist in both attitude and practise than
other parties". Of course, finding common cause with the working class
does not mean accepting any racist or Islamaphobic ideas which exist. In
the 1970s and again in the early 1990s, socialists and trade unionists
were involved in assisting Muslim communities in East London, for
example, to organise community self-defence against racist attacks. Such
measures may well be necessary in the coming period. As socialists we
are fighting for organisations of the working class, particularly the
trade unions, to actively take up the issues of racism, the right to
practise religion free of discrimination, and to oppose state repression
that particularly affect Muslims. For example, in the aftermath of the
bombings, members of the Socialist Party and others on the left argued
for the TUC to call a national demonstration under the slogans ‘no to
terror, no to war, no to racism’.
Opposing state repression includes campaigning
against the attempts of the government to ban organisations such as Hizb
ut-Tahrir, just as we have opposed the attempts of the National Union of
Students to ban them from campuses. We do not agree with Hizb
ut-Tahrir’s ideas but it is through debates, not government bans, that
they will be answered. Where individuals are involved in planning or
carrying out terrorist attacks, the government already has more than
enough legislation to prosecute them. The attempt to ban these
organisations, however, will only increase the alienation of young
Muslims. While the reactionary political Islamic ideas of Hizb ut-Tahrir
have very limited support amongst young Muslims now, the government’s
policy could lead to them gaining ground. In addition, no one should be
under any illusions that government legislation will not be used against
socialists in the future. Blair has already disgustingly slandered the
predecessor of the Socialist Party, the Militant Tendency, by comparing
us to the 7/7 bombers, regardless of the fact that we have always
condemned terrorism.
The anti-war movement showed the potential for a
united movement between working-class Muslims and other sections of the
population. While it did not succeed in preventing New Labour going to
war, which would have taken mass industrial action, it nonetheless
profoundly weakened the government. Mobilisations against the occupation
of Iraq, particularly by the working class in the US and Britain, remain
vital to forcing the withdrawal of the troops. However, the anti-war
movement alone is not enough. Muslims and other sections of the working
class also have an interest in fighting side-by-side against
privatisation and cuts in public services here in Britain. We also need
a united movement for free education and against low pay.
Ethnic minorities, generally amongst the most
oppressed sections of the working class, have always played a role
greater than their numbers in the British labour movement. And it is
united working-class action that has played the key role in cutting
across racism in Britain in the past. In the 1950s, for example, it was
the railway workers’ union which played the leading role in getting rid
of the colour bar in many London pubs. In the 1970s, trade unions were
instrumental in the battle to defeat the far-right, racist National
Front.
In the coming period, despite the attempts of the
pro-Labour trade union leaders to hold back struggle, we will see an
increase in the scale of struggle against the attacks of New Labour and
big business. This will tend to increase the unity of the working class.
However, the undoubted increase in racism and tension between different
communities since 7/7 is a worrying trend in the other direction. Future
7/7 style attacks could dramatically worsen the situation. It is
entirely understandable that some sections of Muslims, facing increased
oppression, may tend to turn inwards. That, however, does not offer a
way forward. Socialists must fight for the maximum workers’ unity and to
win a new generation of Muslims to socialist ideas.
Liberation for Muslims worldwide will only be
achieved on the basis of a struggle for socialism. Capitalism has
created enormous advances in science, technique and wealth. The world
economy today is 17 times the size it was a century ago. Despite this,
all the technology developed by capitalism has not provided clean water
for 1.2 billion people or food for the 841 million who are seriously
malnourished. Last year, $1 trillion was spent on armaments worldwide,
dwarfing the paltry sums spent on aid. In the 22 Arab countries, growth
in income per head has been lower than anywhere else in the world except
Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN. Despite the enormous natural
resources of the Middle East, one in five Arabs live on less than $2 a
day.
Capitalism is capable of spending billions on
developing weaponry that is used to bomb the poor of Afghanistan and
Iraq into the rubble, but it cannot solve poverty, hunger or disease. It
is a system incapable of fully harnessing the science and technology it
has brought into being. It is incapable of providing for the needs of
humanity or of protecting our fragile planet.
By contrast, a socialist society would be able to
harness the enormous potential of human talent and technique in order to
build a society and economy which could meet the needs of all. By
bringing the vast companies that dominate our planet into democratic
public ownership it would be possible to begin to build a society, based
on a democratic world plan of production and development, that would
genuinely meet the needs of the billions not the billionaires.
Worldwide, understanding of the ideas of socialism,
and the role of the working class, was pushed back in the course of the
1990s under an avalanche of anti-socialist propaganda from world
capitalism, which falsely equated the Soviet Union with genuine
socialism. However, the experience of capitalism is leading a new
generation to enter struggle and to begin to move in a socialist
direction. In the last two years in a series of countries, including
Nigeria, Bolivia and Italy, general strikes have brought society to a
halt, while in Pakistan we have seen the heroic struggle of the Telecom
workers against privatisation. It is struggles such as these which show
the potential for the working class to change society, if armed with a
clear socialist programme.
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