Cutting ties with the MCB
Posted on March 25, 2009
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The Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has suspended ties with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in a row about a statement signed by one of its leaders, Daud Abdullah, which appears to countenance the use of violence against British forces:
Blears has suspended official links with the MCB over allegations that its deputy general secretary endorsed a Hamas call for attacks on foreign troops, including possibly British troops, if they try to intercept arms smuggled into Gaza.Blears last night pressed the MCB for further clarification after it distanced itself from a declaration calling for a new jihad over Gaza made by the Hamas-backed “global anti-aggression campaign” in Istanbul last month. The cabinet minister is still pressing the MCB’s deputy general secretary, Dr Daud Abdullah, who attended and signed the Istanbul declaration, to clarify his own position.
Further commentary can be found here and here, which focuses on today’s Guardian editorial, which includes this passage:
…the government’s chief quarrel is with the hypothetical suggestion that resistance would be appropriate if UK forces were ever used to intercept arms destined for Gaza. Very many Muslims, and indeed many non-Muslims, would agree with that – just as many in the mainstream felt anger in response to a war of aggression in Iraq. For all the undoubted differences with the long years of the Irish republican armed campaign – the abject lack of support for terrorism in the Muslim community being the most important – there is a parallel when it comes to the folly of refusing to engage with widespread views because they are deemed disagreeable.
There are several problems with the Guardian’s line on this. First and foremost, it is not relevant whether many or most British Muslims would subscribe to the view that violence against British forces can be justified here or anywhere else – except that if it is true then it is a very serious state of affairs indeed. Government cannot and must not engage with any organisation which is prepared to countenance the waging of war against the British state (i.e. commit treason). If this is the position in which the MCB finds itself then it is up to the MCB to shift its position, not the government.
Secondly, while such figures as we have would indicate that support for terrorism among the Muslim community is rather less in percentage terms than the support that Sinn Fein/IRA used to receive from Ulster Catholics in the 1980s, to describe this as an “abject lack of support” for terrorism is misleading. Maybe as many as ten percent of Muslims are prepared to support Islamist extremism at least in principle in some circumstances – a small minority, yes, but not an insignificant one. Ten percent of two million people is still quite a lot of people.
The degree to which such views are widespread within the Muslim community or outside it has no bearing on the fact that the views need to be challenged and defeated. Which means first of all that the government cannot be seen to endorse any organisation which will not reject those views.
The MCB has every right to choose who its spokespeople should be. It has no right to expect or demand government patronage in any and all circumstances. The government is right to cut ties with the Muslim Council of Britain.
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