Attack on UK Muslims will create extremism

From the political Right, Left, and Centre it is truly open season on Britain’s Muslims. I read the papers, watch the news, and occasionally read the blogs, and shake my head in disbelief.

Under the guise of confronting Islamic extremism and terrorism, there is a daily deluge of Muslim bashing. The vitriol towards the Birmingham Muslim School governors, which is now spreading to Bradford and Tower Hamlets is polarising whole communities, worse still alienating a generation of young Muslims.

Seamus Milne in today’s Guardian has given the best articulation yet as to what is occurring, not just in Birmingham but across the country.

There are those, he argues who are wilfully confusing conservative Islam with extremism, and terrorism. He suggest that all conservative elements of religious denominations would come into conflict with liberal secular society, be that Catholic, Judaism, protestant, Hinduism and Sikhism.

Like conservative Islam, the conservative side of all the above religions could be challenged on issues of gender, same sex relationships and marriages, and relationships outside of their faiths. And there are many conservative-led faith schools.The question therefore, is why just target schools that have predominantly Muslim children? Why is their conservativism branded extremism, and border line terrorism?

The most worrying element about this whole saga is that this type of attack is coming from the Right, the Left and the Centre of British politics.

In Tower Hamlets for example, the unprecedented attack on Mayor Lutfur Rahman has predominantly come from the Left and Centre of British politics. The default articulation of Mayor Rahman from his detractors is that, ‘Mayor Rahman and his association with Islamic extremists’. The way this Mayor is scrutinised and dealt much differently to other politicians was highlighted on election night.

During the Mayoral election count a few hundred of Rahman supporters, manly young men gathered at the count centre. By any standards the political participation and activism from a younger generation should have been applauded and welcomed.

Not in Tower Hamlets. This form of civic engagement was met with a show of police presence one would only expect at a football match, or a heightened anti-police demonstration. Tweets were flying about that night, that ‘Something’s going to kick off in Tower Hamlets with all these police here’. Of course it didn’t.

The message, however, from the establishment to these young Bangladeshis couldn’t have been clearer: ‘We see you as threat, and will not hesitate to come down hard on you. Even if you’re just voting.’

There is little doubt that there remain challenges within some of these Birmingham schools highlighted, as there probably would be in many faith schools, and other schools in general. But surely they can be dealt without this wholesale persecution that has absolutely no nuanced articulation in acknowledging or confronting challenges.

The greatest threat this onslaught could produce is the very hyperbole the detractors talk about: Extremism.

This unprecedented anti-Muslim rhetoric plays wonderfully into the hands of those who wish to poison young Muslim minds: ‘Look what they think of you’, they could easily say. ‘Look how they treat you when you engage in politics, in civic activities such as being a school governor. You do everything they ask you to do and look how you’re treated’.

This heavy handed, discriminatory approach therefore, becomes a recruiting tool for real extremism that we should fear.

Somebody sensible has to call a halt on the present proceedings. If we don’t this disdain, this hatred of everything Muslim is going to come back and bite us hard.

Simon Woolley