| Spanky |
08-18-2006 08:28 PM |
Weekend Present for TY
Its niced to be backed up by the Economist. Please notice the section in bold.
After the terror plot
British exceptionalism
Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition
What to do (and what not to do) about the radicalisation of British Muslims
“WHY us?” Britons have been asking themselves this week, as they struggle through the chaos to which another terrorist plot has condemned their airports (see article). “What have we done to deserve this?”
The idea that Britain is receiving special attention from Islamic terrorism should not be exaggerated. In Canada 17 people were arrested in June on suspicion of scheming to blow up buildings there. France and the Netherlands have produced plenty of fanatics. The Madrid bombings in 2004 were Europe's most lethal terrorist outrage, while nothing has yet surpassed the horror of the September 11th 2001 attacks on America. Yet the plots of July 7th and 21st last year, the scheme foiled last week to bring down up to ten aircraft from Heathrow bound for America, and the spooks who know about these things all suggest that, right now, Britain faces a greater risk of home-grown terrorist attack than other rich countries.
There are three reasons for that. One lies in history. Most of the rich world's Muslims are immigrants and their families; but in America, everybody else is an immigrant too, so Muslims are no more nor less a part of the mainstream than the country's other hyphenated groups. European Muslims, on the other hand, are conscious of being a minority that contrasts, and sometimes conflicts, with an indigenous majority. What's more, American Muslims tend to be relatively well-off, upwardly-mobile types, while many British Muslims are the disaffected, unemployed children of illiterate workers shipped in as cheap industrial labour. Those factors help explain why fewer American than British Muslims have turned against their countries.
Britain's imperial past adds a further dimension. Unlike Muslims in the rest of Europe, who hail largely from Turkey and Africa, the largest group of British Muslims comes from Pakistan. Since Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to have taken up residence in Pakistan, al-Qaeda is now, presumably, under the protection of Pakistanis. The “Pakistanisation of al-Qaeda”, as Olivier Roy, a French Islamic scholar, calls it, has strengthened the links between Britain and Islamist terror, and helps explain why 17 people are said to have been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Heathrow plot (25 have been arrested in Britain).
Foreign policy offers a second explanation. Hostility to British troops' presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to Tony Blair's tolerant attitude to Israel's pounding of Lebanon is certainly not the only reason for terrorist attacks. After all, September 11th happened before any of that, at a time when American and British troops were protecting Muslims in Bosnia. Even so, the near-unanimity of Muslim opposition to British policy in the Middle East, evident from opinion polls, may encourage the extremists to blow up their countrymen. Indeed, ministers' refusal to countenance the idea that foreign policy influences the plotters is flatly contradicted by intelligence chiefs and other civil servants, who have made it clear, in briefings and leaked documents, that they think a perceived “war against Islam” is helping radicalise young Muslims.
A third explanation may lie in domestic policy. Some critics argue that Britain's espousal of a “multicultural” rather than “integrationist” model for dealing with minorities—leaving them to their own devices, rather than trying to absorb them into the national culture—has contributed to a sense of alienation which polls suggest is sharper in Britain than in other countries. True, there are differences in some symbolic areas. In France, for instance, girls may not wear headscarves at school, while in Britain they can attend classes in full hijab. But the distinction between the two approaches is, at the moment, greater in theory than in practice.
The danger of appeasement
If the truth lies in a mixture of all three explanations, then there is no simple solution. But there are things the government can do. It should, for instance, keep up the pressure on the Pakistani government to shut down organisations that foster terrorism and to hunt down perpetrators. And it should abandon its own policy of increasing the number of religious schools. State funding for faith-based education is usually a bad idea in itself, for religious discrimination should have no place in 21st-century education. And these days, there is a sharper objection: policies that deepen religious divisions can be dangerous.
There are also things the government should not do. The suggestion by a group of Muslim MPs and other “community leaders” that Britain should alter its stance on the Middle East for fear of alienating more Muslims was deservedly slapped down by ministers. There are good reasons for changing policies. Placating aspiring murderers isn't one of them.
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