Muslim leaders, it’s time to get serious

In this strange new world we’ve started to become used to in recent years, one of the mantras repeated after each fresh terrorist atrocity goes like this - only the tiniest of minorities is to blame: most Muslims reject violence against civilians.

And it’s hopefully true.

But then what? After the ritual condemnations from mainstream Muslim groups - even choreographed at times, like those issued by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and other groups after the July 7 bombings in London - everything continues as normal. Until the next horror.

It’s time Muslim communities worldwide moved beyond denunciations. They simply don’t hold water any more.

Let’s take as an example, the case of Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed. The Syrian-born fundamentalist cleric has been living in London since the British Government gave him asylum after the Saudis expelled him in 1986. For years he has been preaching a message of hatred, openly espousing jihad against America, Israel and - yes - Britain.

Eleven months before Al-Qaida’s 9-11 attacks, I interviewed Bakri in London, outside a Regent’s Park mosque an hour after Friday prayers. We spoke shortly after he roused hundreds of young men into a frenzy of chanting and Allahu Akbars in celebration of the bombing one day earlier of a US Navy destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen USS Cole sailors died in the bombing.

Bakri watched impassively as his followers set alight US and Israeli flags and chanted slogans such as: “USA, you will pay, Osama is on his way” and “Bomb, bomb Tel Aviv, the White House, Downing Street”.

In that October 2000 interview Bakri praised a campaign of escalating Palestinian violence in Israel, adding that he hoped it would spread to all Muslim countries, and to non-Muslim countries too.

“There’s already plans of action in different parts of Europe, not only in the Middle East,” he said.

Bakri also said, “We do not target civilians and women and children,” although that contradicted his own earlier statements expressing support for terrorist attacks which cost hundreds of civilian lives, including Hamas suicide bombings in Israel and Al-Qaida’s 1998 bombing of American embassies in East Africa.

That Bakri could stand in a London street and, under the gaze of uniformed policemen, incite Muslims to violence says much about the laws of that country. (The British Government recently finally announced its decision to prioritise new laws against “encouragement” of terrorism.) But his freedom to spew his vitriol says even more about the community of which he considers himself a part.

Neither in 2000, nor the following year when terrorists struck the US so devastatingly, nor in the years since - marked by outrages in Bali, Beslan, Jakarta, Istanbul, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and now London - has the British Muslim community turned against Bakri in any meaningful way.

Take the MCB, Britain’s main umbrella body comprising some 400 organisations. As such it claims to represent the community (although if online forums are anything to go by, some British Muslims consider it a “sellout” for various reasons).

The council churns out media statements by the shipload, commenting on anything from the death of Yasser Arafat to complaints about police raids on British mosques. When it comes to taking a stand against extremism, however, the MCB’s messages appear decidedly mixed.

After the March 2004 bombings in Madrid, the council urged clerics in Britain to preach peace, and to co-operate with police “in dealing with any criminal activity including terrorist threat”. (Incidentally, Bakri’s response was to tell the BBC: “Co-operating with the authorities against any other Muslims … is an act of apostasy in Islam.”)

Three months later, however, the MCB issued a statement deploring media reporting on Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric visiting London at the time, who has voiced support for suicide bombings.

The MCB called Al-Qaradawi “a voice of reason and understanding” and charged that a “Zionist lobby”, unhappy with the cleric’s criticism of Israel, was responsible for a smear campaign.

In 2002, when Britain’s chief rabbi urged the government to “crack down sharply on people attempting to radicalise the Muslim community,” rather than add its voice in support of the call, the MCB responded furiously, accusing the Jewish leader of trying to “deflect attention away from Israel”.

A review of MCB statements since the body was formed in 1997 found none specifically condemning figures like Bakri or Abu Hamza al-Masri - another controversial cleric whom I had the disagreeable experience of interviewing in London, and who is now, along with his hook hand, in custody on trial on terror-related offences.

Online searches did turn up one article, written by an MCB official and published in the Daily Express in 2002, critical of Bakri and al-Masri.

“The vast majority of British Muslims have no time for these two characters and their odious comments,” wrote Inayat Bunglawala, urging the media to stop “giving undue coverage to fringe figures in our community”.

That was three years ago.

Bakri remains at large, in London (although his son told me last week that his father was not taking calls). There’s been no large scale call by Muslim representatives for him to be arrested, or acted against in any other way. No mass protest against him and his ilk. No modern day equivalent of tarring and feathering. No running him out of town.

Writing in the Financial Times recently, foreign policy analyst Mansoor Ijaz - a Muslim American - said Islamic communities in the West needed to act, fast.

Three steps were necessary, he said: Muslims should forbid the use of mosques for spreading bigotry and hatred; open Islamic charities to greater financial scrutiny to identify those funding terrorism; and form Muslim community watch groups “committed to contributing useful information to the authorities”.

That’s the very least we can expect.

Until they act to root out the cancer in their midst, Muslim organisations in the West deserve little sympathy when their pleas for “understanding” are dismissed by non-Muslim societies whose tolerance for being blown to pieces is rapidly coming to an end.