Muslim leaders, it’s time to get serious

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.