Aliens
In Their Own Country
By Massoud Shadjareh
02 April, 2004
The Guardian
Seyf's
a smart-looking guy, Mediterranean looking. If you're clued up about
these things you'd guess he's of Turkish origin. Buying milk at his
local supermarket he and his American flatmate of Pakistani origin were
approached by a loud, white English shopper, who yelled in the middle
of the dairy aisle: "Are you terrorists?"
This was an example
of what passes as humour in Middle England at the moment. Before she
burst out laughing and carried on what turned into a tirade, other shoppers
stood by, nervously looking for staff and indicating that the two Muslim
lads might be trouble.
Forget about the
latest arrests around London. Forget about police profiling of Muslims
(and of that there's plenty) - the general public now categorises all
things Muslim as terror-orientated. Why? It's easy to blame victims
of prejudice for their demonisation - it's a practice with a long pedigree.
But the unending calls on Muslims, from rightwing shock jocks to former
archbishops of Canterbury, to condemn terrorism reveal a level of conditionality
that no other community has been asked to bear.
Throw into this
mix the continuous police raids and arrests since 9/11 under various
pieces of anti-terrorist legislation, the fanfare of media attention
when Muslims of various origins are arrested and the deafening silence
when most (some 450 out of 540) are released. Add the recent analysis
of stop and search figures that shows a disproportionately high number
of the 32,100 people who were stopped and searched in the last year
(or more accurately 71,100 people when you take into account the misreporting
of some police forces, according to Statewatch) were of Asian origin.
Do not forget to include Islamophobic media coverage of an increasingly
anti-Muslim "war on terror", and stir. The result?
British non-Muslims
are scared of Muslims; they're angry with them and they're paranoid
about the threat they perceive from Muslims ready to blow them up. British
Muslims are scared of the backlash against them from non-Muslims. They're
also paranoid about their safety from wider society, the security services
and the other Muslims that they are told are out there waiting to blow
everybody up.
At either end of
this polarisation we are seeing a level of alienation that bodes ill
for British society. For the Muslim part, their sense of grievance has
to be taken on board by the government, its institutions and the media
in a meaningful way. It's taken two years of lobbying the Met about
stereotyping, but at last, yesterday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner
Peter Clarke's statement to the press was at pains to make clear that
the arrests and their focus should not cast aspersions on the Muslim
community. Yet every breaking news story carried the label "Islamic
terrorists" and the addition of the description "British of
Pakistani origin". It may sell today's papers but it is ultimately
crass vilification.
It is also at the
heart of the growing anger among Muslim youth. Born and bred British,
their citizenship is always conditional. When Kriss Akabussi won athletics
medals he wasn't referred to as a British Christian of Nigerian origin.
Yet Muslims are always alien by description - their religion and ethnicity
used in reporting further edges them to the boundaries of society.
This isn't even
a post-9/11 concern. After the Oldham riots in 2001, we heard that long-term
unemployment or poor career opportunities, fuelled by racism and Islamophobia,
in turn fuelled pain and anger among the young. Three years on, professional
affluent Muslims, whose lives had seen little, if any, of the social
deprivation and societal exclusion that the Cantle report identified,
can tell of discrimination and hatred levelled against them.
They see an older
Muslim leadership panic under the strain of negativity. While younger
organisations such as the London Muslim Coalition called on mosques
to pray for peace for all in the wake of the horror of Madrid, the Muslim
Council of Britain called on mosques to report any suspicions they had
about anything. It's the difference between being a part of society,
however marginalised, and perpetuating the idea that you are an unruly
guest, your stay determined by different conditions than for everyone
else. You don't have to be disaffected youth to see the anomalies and
feel the isolation.
For all the Muslim
communities' faults - and we, like all other communities and individuals,
have many - our empathy, often inspired by our faith, with the deprived
and oppressed is not one of them. To want an end to injustice against
Palestinians doesn't make you a terrorist, opposing the war against
Iraq or calling on Russia to withdraw from Chechnya doesn't make you
an extremist of any class. Yet when British Muslims participate in demonstrations
and leafleting - against their government's participation in occupations
of Muslim lands - this is seen as more evidence of inherent detachment
from British mores and, worse still, attachment to potential, if not
actual, terrorist causes.
The late Sulayman
Zain ul-Abedin, who was the first to be tried and found not guilty of
offences under the Terrorism Act of 2000, found his reading material
used as "evidence" against him. In a letter to some mosques
last year the Charity Commission is alleged to have asked some not to
allow prayers to be recited for Palestine as this was "political".
So, as a British Muslim you can't act on what you believe in, however
just; you mustn't read about it and you can't even pray for it.
Seyf is a volunteer
at our offices. Formerly a journalist in Turkey, he is seeking asylum,
having been tortured by police for his views on Turkish foreign policy.
Some of his colleagues are serving sentences for possessing reading
material deemed seditious. Civil society can only save Britain from
becoming a country that people seek asylum from, when its institutions
and its media realise that the alienation of Muslims and many others
is neither self-imposed or imported from abroad.
· Massoud
Shadjareh is chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission
[email protected]