LONDON ATTACK - Part 3; The Muslim response

Last night the Police moved in on houses in Leeds as CCTV evidence and leads from the public has helped Police ascertain the identity of the London bombers, all four of whom are now confirmed as Britains first suicide bombers. The most shocking thing about this positive turn of events is that all four of the bombers were "clean skins" in that they were all British born Muslims living in West Yorkshire with no previous criminal record or connection to known terrorist groups whose families had no idea was intending such horrendous acts. This has precipitated serious concerns this morning of a backlash against British Muslims and a rise in "Islamophobia":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1527699,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1527344,00.html

In response the Muslim Council of Britain has announced that it intends to hold a series of protest marches in Britains major cities protesting the bombing and vocally denouncing terrorism. Though I have a difference of opinion with the Council on many issues, I intend to be involved with the London march in any way possible and I hope to see as many members of different faith and non-faith groups as well as ordinary Londoners doing the same. At the very least I am encouraging my friends at the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society to offer their support by reminding them (if need be) that political secularisation was brought about in the first place by an alliance between non-theists and liberal believers as a response to the outrages perpetrated by religions in the West.

I would like to see more Muslims moving beyond the defensive dismissal of Islamic terrorists as simply murderers who act in a manner which is not in line with Islam. While this is true it is also undeniable that these terrorists come from within Muslim communities and families and call themselves Muslims and therefore it is not enough to simply wash their hands of the terrorists and deny they are really Muslims, I think they have to actively name and shame those sections of the Muslim community who forment hate and then cynically manipulate young, angry Muslims into carrying out these acts. They have to actively engage in a very public hearts and minds campaign to take these young muslims by the metaphorical scruff of the neck and remind them of why their parents came to live in this country in the first place as well as tell them that those imams that preach violence are twisting and perverting the true meaning of Islam and therefore must be rejected. It is my hope that this march that the Muslim Council of Britain is intending is the beginning of that sort of coming out by the British Muslim community in a much stronger stance that moves beyond crying out against Islamophobia or burying their heads when challenged on this issue.

A Labour Muslim MP speaking on Breakfast this morning said that this problem was primarily a Muslim problem that needed to be sorted out by Muslims in the same way that the BNP (British Nationalist Party aka the ex-National Front) is the white community's problem that needs to be addressed by the white community. I agree and would go further than he did by saying that if the BNP committed an atrocity in an area that I live in, I would take it upon myself as my duty and obligation, to organise against them and publicly denounce them and everything they stand for, saying they do not stand for the majority of white people and that their intepretation of white culture, what it is, where it comes from, what it desires for itself and where it is heading, is wrong - pure and simple. An example of their mindset is how they are already attempting to exploit the bombings in an upcoming by-election:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1527627,00.html

Although I was not around at the time I do remember the stance against the BNP that was taken by the likes of the white members of the Anti-Fascist league that joined non-white Britains in actively opposing the BNP through-out Britain. They made an important contribution to increased acceptance of multi-cultural immigrants coming to Britain for better opportunities and showed that in the face of sustained violence, hatred and prejudice perpetrated by a minority who act in your name... passive opposition is not enough.

Every British Muslim I know fears a backlash and increased Islamophobia since last Thursday, my response is that "in their place I would not hide or keep a low profile, I would take a very strong stance against the terrorists and make positive claims both for the true nature of my faith and for the tolerant, secular, liberal democracy that I find myself living in (as a British Muslim)." I appreciate that that is not easy thing to do and so I will stand behind them 100%.

Moderate muslims now more than ever need our support at this time to reassure them that (a) we don't blame them and (b) to back them in taking the brave decision to speak act out loudly and clearly against Islamic terrorism who are, it must be remembered, their fellow muslims, and as the arrests show today, live amongst them as friends, neighbours and relatives here in Britain.

LONDON ATTACK Part 2; My reflection

Ken Livingstone, London Major, made a great speech yesterday despite his dodgy Arab connections in the past. It summed up a lot of Londoners feelings in the aftermath of the attacks. Here is the second half of his speech…

Quote:
“…I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever. That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city. Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life. I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”

Yesterday I had a discussion with a young Cameroonian who started the conversation with “Not that the killing of those innocent people can be condoned, but it is understandable in the light of Iraq…” To which (after counting to ten) I politely pointed out that Al Queda and it’s ilk preceded Iraq and that though Iraq has undoubtedly been a useful recruiting tool the leadership of these terrorist organizations does not talk in terms of foreign policy, oil, cultural imperialism or other geo-political concepts, they talk in terms of “infidels”, “unbelievers”, “enemies of Islam” and other concepts of radical Islam.

That is why the deaths of a number of Muslims in an area dominated by Muslims where one of the attacks took place doesn’t surprise me. These terrorists do not mind killing their co-religionists both here or in North Africa or the Middle East. Their brand of militancy protects no particular ethnicity, faith or creed... we are all lambs to the slaughter, because we, the world, do not accept or acknowledge their incredibly narrow, self-defeating view of the world. It is why those who blame western imperialism and the war on Iraq for these attacks, saying that the means is unacceptable but the ends is understandable... do not understand who and what they are dealing with. These people are not like the IRA or the Basque separatists who use terrorism to try to achieve a particular political aim or as a response to a particular political situation. Understand that and you will understand why Iraq helps recruitment but it doesn't explain the threat.

One of the reasons why radical Islam has turned to terrorism in the West is because it is their way of life, not ours, that is most at threat, and it is a small step to terrorism when for centuries the radical Islam that has held societies in sway to its irrational, fundamentalist anti-liberal doctrines and intractable laws has been attacked and eroded not by deliberate external invasions from without, such as Iraq, but from within by globalization and western influences which presents an alternative set of values, beliefs and way of living which is far superior - and attractive - to that which these terrorists represent. That more than anything is why they hate us, because they cannot compete with us. Since living in London I have had the opportunity to meet many Muslims, Africans, Arabs and others who have come to London because despite the pollution, the overcrowding, and the expense of the city it lives and breathes by a set of values that they have made their own, a set of values that they appreciate even more so because they have lived under the alternatives.

This is why the terrorists are a pathetic footnote in history that future historians will pass over with a sneer, and it is secular, liberal, democracies that are the future - both here and everywhere in the world, as the triumphs of the Enlightenment that set out the blueprint that our secular, liberal, capitalist democracies rest upon continue to spread, blossom and thrive.

Two links to some American reaction, the first amused me, the second moved me.

http://www.deanesmay.com/files/deanesmay-DontMessWithMomma.jpg

http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=1319

LONDON ATTACK – Part 1; my personal story

I normally work in Highbury Islington that is one tube stop removed from Kings Cross station on the Victoria Line, which means I go through Kings Cross at least twice a day. Because my job has flexi-time I usually start work at 10am, which means I normally avoid the worst of the morning rush hour. If this had been a normal working day for me I would have passed through Kings Cross at 9.40am this morning, 50 minutes after the bomb at Kings Cross went off. Today was different though as I was due in Covent Garden to host a PR event for MP’s and a minor 'it' girl. I arrived at Victoria station expecting there to be difficulties with transport after hearing news warnings over breakfast that there were going to be ongoing problems with most lines in the tube this morning. The first train was slow in arriving and was too packed to take more than a handful of passengers on the platform and then when the second train arrived it crawled to Victoria station and was almost as packed as the first train. I joked with a couple of other passengers that it was typical British irony for the transport system to go all to hell the day after London wins the Olympics on the back of a favourable impression of improvements in the transport system.

When I arrived at Victoria station, the passengers were greeted with the news that the entire tube system was out of action which most of the passengers around put down to yet further inefficiency and underperformance on the part of Metronet which had recently been bollixed by Transport for London for being way behind schedule for upgrading networks and lines. In fact when the first reports came through after the bombings they were reporting that Metronet had apparently conceded that an electricity fault had caused the explosion at Kings Cross. This was later retracted and the first reports that a terrorist attack may have taken place started to filter through. By then at 9.45am I was on a red bus to Trafalgar Square which would be the closest destination to Covent Garden. Ten minutes later the driver suddenly announced that he had received the order that no buses were to go through Central London and he would have to drop us off at the edge of Zone 1. He said he didn’t know why the order had come though but it must mean something big was going down.

After disembarking from the bus and five minutes walk in the direction of Trafalgar Square I was in Parliament Square where there were more cops, and more machine guns than I have seen anywhere else in my life. I knew then that something had very definitely gone wrong. It was then that I first tried to ring my mobile and discovered that the London mobile network was down. As I found a red telephone box close to Downing Street a never-ending wave of ambulance, police cars and fire engines poured in the direction of Trafalgar Square. At that point I discovered that bombs had apparently gone off in Central London and that the tube and the buses were going to be shut down for the foreseeable future. After contacting the nearest and dearest I walked to Trafalgar Square and found an Internet café where I was able to reassure everybody that I was all right as well as find out what on earth was going on. I was told by work to either stay where I was or go home if possible.

I decided that I would go to the pub and then walk down to the parks and take it easy until the rail stations reopened and the mobile network restored. However when I went over the road to the pub I inadvertently caused a bomb scare in a sign of how, despite the outward calm, everybody’s nerves were shredded. I was carrying a heavy white bag in addition to my backpack that was full of gift packs containing cosmetics for the media event that I placed it down next to a stool and went to the bar to order a drink in a pub that was packed full of people. Because there were probably ten times more people than normal there for that time of day the couple of bar staff that were there were unable to cope with demand and I waited a full ten minutes waiting to be served with no luck. In the meantime a lady comes charging through the crowd to say that there was an unattended bag by the entrance and the barman goes over to have a look. Immediately he pulls the alarm and everybody hurriedly leaves the bar. I go to pick up my white bag on the way out and can’t see it but I know I don’t have the time to look for it so exit like everybody else. It isn’t until I get across to the other side of the street that I consider that the mysterious bag might be mine. In the meantime cops descend from everywhere and within a minute they are over the bag. Peering across the road I can make out that the bag in question is indeed mine which means it must have been moved by someone looking for more space. I go back over the road and politely let the nearest policeman know. He is pretty good about it thanking me for coming back promptly though the barmen who set off the alarm is clearly unimpressed. When the cop asks me what is in the bag, I tell him that if they had had to explode my bag they would have had nice smelling policeman for miles around (because of all of the cosmetics). Thankfully he still managed to retrain a sense of humour despite the situation and cracked a small smile.

After that incident I decided that since I couldn’t go anywhere other than by foot or ring anyone, I might as well head to the parks and wait the situation out. So I walked past Trafalgar square and onto Hyde Park and then Green Park. The atmosphere was surreal, everyone was talking quietly and calmly, clearly shock had set in and everyone, including myself was pretty numb at that stage. I noticed a lot of American accents amongst the people passing me and I wondered how many of them were New Yorkers and what sense of déjà vu they might be feeling and what they made of the reaction of Londoners compared to that of New Yorkers. For me it was one of the most surreal days of my life and it was amazing what I was already beginning to accept as normal (such as an unending line of office workers in the middle of the day walking as far as the eye could see). I have never see Londerners as quiet, as considerate, and as blank as I saw them on Thursday. It was like being in the front parlour room while a preist quietly adminsters the last rites on a dying relative in the next room.

At Green Park tube station they announced that half of London’s rail stations were reopening with a reduced outward-bound rail service though the tube was to remain shut. This included Victoria so I walked to Victoria station and then climbed onto a tightly packed train that after numerous stutters and starts finally wended its way to Clapham Junction. The police presence at Clapham Junction, Britain’s busiest rail station was extraordinary, which did nothing to alleviate the fear that it is a prime target for future attacks after successfully hitting Kings Cross, London’s busiest tube station. I decided to walk home from Clapham Junction, as I couldn’t quite face taking a bus then if I just didn’t have too.

It is going to take a while for things to return back to normality, I am determined to return back to the tubes, trains and buses tomorrow to show that life for us will still go on. But I am mindful that (a) I will be passing through Kings Cross on the Victoria Line to get to work and (b) that the tactic for Al Queda since 9/11 has been to make a second attempt after the initial bombings a few days later. It happened successfully in Turkey against British interests and it happened in Madrid where the second attempt was successfully foiled. I think they will try again and then they may turn their attention to Rome. I don’t think they will attack tomorrow but from the middle of next week stepping on those tubes, trains and buses is for me going to present a little battle of mind, spirit and will over shivering flesh. Especially once those tubes leave the platform and enter the very long tunnel between Kings Cross station and Highbury Islington.