Andrew Gilligan says the new coalition must reformulate our relationship with moderate Muslims — and marginalise the extremists for good
One of the unsung heroes of this year’s election campaign was the Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick. Alone in his party, Mr Fitzpatrick stood up before the election and said something that everyone in east London Labour knew, but no one else had the guts to put on record. To my newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, and Channel 4’s Dispatches, he blew the whistle on the way that, in his words, the Tower Hamlets Labour party had been infiltrated and ‘corrupted’ by a radical Islamist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, rather as the Militant Tendency operated in the 1980s.
The IFE, based at the hard-line East London Mosque and highly influential inside the Muslim Council of Britain, seeks, in its own words, to change the ‘very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed... from ignorance to Islam.’ It ‘strives for the establishment of a global [my italics] society, the Khilafah [caliphate]... comprised of individuals who live by the principles of... the Shari’ah.’ It says its ‘primary work’ to create this state ‘is in Europe [my italics] because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.’
Mr Fitzpatrick described how dozens of new people suddenly started turning up to Labour party meetings. Membership of one Tower Hamlets constituency more than doubled in a few months, at a time when Labour membership nationally was in steep decline. We also spoke, off the record, to many serving or former Labour councillors who told us that the IFE exercised significant influence over the local council and played a part in the election of its then leader, Lutfur Rahman — something Mr Rahman has refused to deny.
The IFE was, naturally, furious with Mr Fitzpatrick, promising to ‘sweep him out of power’ and ‘show him the door’. One of his opponents was Respect’s George Galloway, who in secret recordings admitted that his previous election victory in a neighbouring seat ‘owed more than I can say, more than it would be wise for me to say, to the IFE’. Incredible activity took place on the ground, with hundreds of IFE supporters mobilising against the evil Fitzpatrick. So I was worried. I needn’t have been.
Mr Fitzpatrick, against the trend, doubled his majority. Mr Galloway came third, with a sixth of the vote. Respect was all but wiped out of the council. Mr Rahman and all his allies lost their jobs.
This proves three things: that bravery like Fitzpatrick’s pays off; that, contrary to the claims of the far right, there is indeed such a thing as a ‘moderate Muslim’; and that the Islamists have far less support in their community than they, or their backers in the political establishment, think.
All this quite clearly offers the new government a substantial opportunity. Because almost as important as restoring balance to our public finances is restoring balance to our relationship with our Muslim fellow-citizens.
It is no accident that it is Britain which faces the most serious Islamist and terrorist threat of any country in the western world. It is no coincidence that Britain is the only western country to have come under suicide attack from its own citizens. These things have come about, in part, because the previous government got its policy in this area just about as wrong as it could possibly get.
Labour was harsh where it should have been liberal — on control orders, on detention without charge, on random, blanket stop-and-search, and on alleged complicity in torture. None of these have had much anti-terrorism effect, but all have undermined the rule of law for which we are fighting, energised the terrorists and alienated middle-ground Muslims whose support we need.
And Labour was liberal where it should have been harsh. The intelligence services allowed dangerous Islamic radicals free rein in Britain until 9/11.
Even now, despite their humiliation by the voters, Islamist sympathisers in Whitehall are working to shape the policies of the new administration. Inside the Department of Communities and Local Government there is a paid ministerial adviser called Mohammed Abdul Aziz, who is also an honorary trustee of the East London Mosque.
At an internal government event during the election campaign, while the politicians were safely out of the way, Mr Aziz and another man launched a paper, ‘Winning Hearts and Minds: Understanding and Engaging British Muslim Communities’, a copy of which has been leaked to The Spectator. The document is a sophisticated argument, couched in pseudo-scientific terms, for the new government to work more closely with Islamists and even terrorist sympathisers.
Mr Aziz’s paper condemns what he calls a ‘veto approach’ which has, he says, meant too little engagement with many of the ‘most significant organisations across [Britain’s] Muslim communities’. By this, it turns out, he means the East London Mosque. The paper ranks a number of Muslim organisations, with the East London Mosque scoring the highest marks and anti-fundamentalist bodies such as British Muslims for Secular Democracy scoring very low indeed.
Mr Aziz claims, absurdly, that the IFE is now primarily a ‘community organisation’ with an ‘emphasis on service delivery… rather than political or ideological programmes’. He says that ministers should consider appearing in public with organisations which promote ‘a message of divisiveness, expressing intolerance towards other communities in the UK’. He says that officials should even deal privately with some organisations which may support ‘violent extremism in Britain’.
I’ll be watching to see whether the new government takes any notice of these terrible ideas; one should never underestimate the power of people like Mr Aziz whispering in ministers’ ears. But I would like to propose a completely different approach — a new compact, if you like, with ‘Muslim Middle England’.
There should be no more pandering to Islamists. We shouldn’t ban them — this is a free country. But we should treat them like we treat another fringe organisation which they in some ways resemble, the BNP: no public money, no official contact, no posts in policymaking bodies. (We could start with the DCLG!)
At the same time, we should build up the Muslim middle. Not with clumsy anti-extremist programmes like Prevent, inevitably tainted by their government sponsorship; but with a genuine acceptance that we have got things wrong and need to put them right. There should be no more mass stop-and-search programmes in Muslim areas: tens of thousands of stops have never caught even one terrorist. When the 28-day detention-without-charge provision comes up for renewal in parliament next week, it should not be renewed.
The problem, of course, is that the ministers have changed — but the officials are the same. A group of securocrats recently whinged to the Times about the threat to the ‘cross-party consensus’ posed by dastardly Lib Dem plans to review control orders. But the great thing about a new government is that it has no baggage; no failures to defend. It would be disastrous if, under the flawed mantra of ‘consensus’, it were to repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.