News Analysis / Ray Moseley: Dealing with Britain’s ‘Muslim problem’

Monday, 06 June 2011

British governments have been wracked internally over the question of how to deal with Muslim organizations that are committed to nonviolence but do not subscribe to core British values. (File photo)

By RAY MOSELEY
Al Arabiya

For several years, British governments have been wracked internally over the question of how to deal with Muslim organizations that are committed to nonviolence but do not subscribe to core British values of democracy, human rights and tolerance of other religions.

Do such groups give succour, even inadvertently, to Islamic extremist groups that promote violence?

That question caused divisions in the previous Labor government and in the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but is expected to be resolved this week. Press reports suggest Prime Minister David Cameron’s hard-line view will prevail, over objections from Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister.

Already, according to these reports, 20 of 1,800 organizations that have received government subsidies over the past three years are having their money withdrawn.

“There was this belief that supporting and reaching out to the nonviolent extremists would prevent violent extremists from committing acts of terrorism,” said Haras Rafiq, a founder of the Sufi Muslim Council and a director of Centri, an anti-extremism organization. “It is clear that Cameron now believes that approach was muddled.”

Mr. Cameron signaled his intentions in a speech in Munich last February in which he said multiculturalism in Britain has not worked. In future, he said, only groups that encourage integration would receive funding.

“Let’s properly judge these organizations,” he said. “Do they believe in universal human rights—including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law?”

Mr. Clegg and his supporters have argued it is crucial to maintain a distinction between violent and nonviolent extremism and it is necessary to engage with Muslim organizations rather than risk alienating them.

Baroness Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, a Conservative who sits on the Cabinet subcommittee dealing with integration, has taken a similar position, warning in a speech earlier this year that “Islamophobia has now crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability.”

“The drip-feeding of fear fuels a rising tide of prejudice,” she said.

The Observer newspaper reported that she has been dissuaded from publicly criticizing the new policy.

Home Secretary Theresa May, who is expected to outline the government’s new approach, told the conservative Daily Telegraph on Monday that the government would cut funding to any Islamic group that espoused extremism and set out “key British values” to which those seeking support must subscribe.

She also complained that universities were not taking the issue of radicalization seriously enough, and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies had not done enough to challenge extremism.

Earlier Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, which represents vice chancellors, said there was no evidence to link “student radicals” with violent extremism, nor evidence that extremist speakers at universities caused radicalism.

The new government policy is expected to withhold funding from groups that “promote or implicitly tolerate the killing of British soldiers,” among other things. It will also seek to limit access to extremist Websites from public buildings, especially schools and libraries. And it will name 25 boroughs (local government units) most at risk from Islamist extremism, including areas of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and Manchester.

The Daily Telegraph editorially backed Mr. Cameron’s approach, saying Labor’s strategy “was a farce, subsidizing some of the very people it was supposed to combat.” It complained that some university vice chancellors turn a blind eye to Muslim anti-Semitism, but would never tolerate similar sentiments from the far Right. The new policy, it said, should deal not just with extremists but also to “the useful idiots” who offer them a platform.

Yvette Cooper, Labor’s shadow Home secretary, agreed it was extremely important to upgrade government strategy is this field but suggested Mr. Cameron was ignoring the advice of some of his officials. “It seems Theresa May has lost another battle on her own policies,” she said.

Mrs. Cooper also complained that the police counterterrorism budget has been cut and there will be 12,000 fewer police officers, including counterterror officers.

(Ray Moseley is a London-based former chief European correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and has worked extensively in the Middle East. He can be reached at rnmoseley@aol.com)