No, we don’t want to conquer the world

  

5 August 2004

* This article was first published in The Guardian, Thursday August 5, 2004. Read all articles by Anas Altikriti.

 

The ferocity of recent attacks on Muslims and Islam in the mainstream British media has led many to question what is driving these attempts to incite hatred and fear of our community. Anyone reading the British press over the past few weeks might be excused for imagining that the country is threatened by hoards of Muslims living within its borders, determined to subvert British values and convert its people to Islam, by hook or by crook.

Take the Sunday Telegraph, whose newly discovered columnist Will Cummins warned of Islam’s “black heart”, which he said should be the focus of our fear, rather than its “black face”. He also claimed that “all Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics” – among which is the desire to eradicate, one way or another, all those who do not share their faith. Substitute any other religion and ethnic or religious minority for “Muslims” and “Islam” to get a sense of the full implications of what the Sunday Telegraph has seen fit to publish. The Guardian Diary has, meanwhile, been told that Will Cummins and the British Council press officer Harry Cummins are the same person. Harry – who so far denies being Will – has been suspended on full pay while his employers investigate the evidence. It would be doubly disturbing if the man who likes to compare Muslims to dogs is indeed the press officer, considering the British Council’s job of promoting Britain as a country, culture and heritage to the world, particularly Arab and Muslim countries.

Elsewhere, Anthony Browne broke new Islamophobic ground in last week’s Spectator under the cover line: “The Muslims are Coming”. Christians justified the persecution and mass murder of Jews in the last century by claiming they had a plot to take over the world, he wrote. But while this was based on lies, Muslims really do now have a plot to conquer the west. One cannot help but wonder where Browne and those who think like him are heading with his line of argument and what some might think justified by it: pogroms against the Muslim community, maybe?In a flagrantly misleading and tendentious report last week, the Times launched a front-page attack on two of Britain’s most respected Islamic educational institutes, attempting to link them with terrorism. Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday carried the absurd allegation, again splashed across its front page, that some Muslim doctors were refusing to treat patients with sexually transmitted diseases because they believed they were a “punishment from God”.

What has baffled many of us is that all these slurs and attacks on our community are made under the banner of defending freedom of speech, expression and choice. Evidently, the argument that it is necessary to kill to save lives, imprison to protect freedoms and wage war to achieve peace, is gaining ground.

British Muslims have always welcomed open debate in an attempt to defeat the fatalist notion of an inevitable “clash of civilisations”. Sheikh al-Qaradawi’s recent visit to Britain would have been a useful chance to discuss how to promote common understanding. More importantly, such an effort would have offered a more favourable image of Britain to the 1.3 billion Arabs and Muslims around the world, who now think of our country more for its aggression and blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, the right within politics and the media worked tirelessly to scupper this opportunity and to demonise hundreds of thousands of British Muslims who adhere to their faith and hold the likes of al-Qaradawi in high regard.

The attempt to force the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims into the tiny space occupied by the minority extremist element is nothing short of wicked. These latest media attacks appear to be part of a concerted attempt not only to do that, but also to tarnish the remarkable history of Muslims in this country and the role they have played in the shaping of our nation. Muslims do not want to conquer the world – on the contrary, it is their lands that are being conquered bit by bit at the hands of western forces. Of course we believe that we have a set of values and ideas which could bring peace, prosperity and justice to the world – as do followers of other faiths and ideologies – and we will continue to advocate and promote those in pursuit of what we believe is best.

Muslims in Britain have the added responsibility of acting as a bridge between the Muslim world and the west. The active participation of British Muslims in the anti-war movement and the key role of Muslim voters in the European elections and recent byelections have demonstrated their capability and potential influence.

These developments perhaps help to provide a clue to the timing of the spate of Islamophobic tirades that have been directed against Muslims in the weeks since. There exist two trends within “active” or “political” Islam. One, widely acknowledged to represent mainstream Muslims, urges and embraces open dialogue with the rest of humanity on an equal basis and sees the prosperity of our world as a shared responsibility of those who inhabit it, based on justice. There is no alternative but to initiate a serious dialogue with this trend if relations between the west and Islam are to move in the right direction.

The other trend, albeit still a minority, has emerged as a product of despotic regimes, oppressive and unethical policies and a cocktail of socio-economic factors. It sees no other option but for Islam to fight back physically, and sees no hope in debate, peaceful dialogue or integration. Islam and Muslims will not disappear into thin air. The right’s attempts to smear and demonise those who strive for justice, openness and the building of bridges of friendship is foolish, to say the very least – and could be of catastrophic consequence for us all.

Anas Altikriti is a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain

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