Rolled-up Trousers: Mirror images of the BNP

When it comes to identifying mirror images of the BNP, you need to actually examine what the party are saying. Last month they complained that Tony Blair had stolen their clothes after his speech on multiculturalism. It was Blair who parked his tanks in the Tory garden but subsequently they have come to be influenced by the current prime minister in a spell only Margaret Thatcher could previously cast.

Outmanoeuvred on the right, Cameron played the party political game by condemning the ‘clunking’ initiatives from the Labour Party in the last few months, only to adopt a position more extreme than anything Labour have produced yet.

He said he would decouple the issues of terrorism and multiculturalism, despite the fact it was his national security policy review that was making the announcements regarding community cohesion and Britain’s Muslim organisations. In fact, in Monday’s speech he went further than any senior politician to date in fusing the two issues together.

This all has been brewing for a while. Cameron has had neocon written all over him from the start, with their interpretation of what Islam should mean. His pal Michael Gove wrote a book on the issue last summer which effectively ruled out Conservative cooperation with the MCB. His press officers refused to answer a basic question of whether they would work with them – yes or no.

I’m genuinely perplexed at what this latest brouhaha is about. The issue of shariah has been mentioned by the political parties more than it has by Muslim bodies. It links into an idea that there is a sinister hidden agenda at the heart of the Muslim community, Protocols of the Elders of Londonistan if you will.

One bloke mentioned it at a meeting with Ruth Kelly last summer along with something about public holidays on Muslim festivals. Even he was talking about official voluntary arbitration on civil matters. It was talked down by Muslims at the time, including me. Nonetheless the narrative on shariah began to spin out of control – the cat was out of the bag as far as the paranoid usual suspects were concerned.

Now I’ve been around many of the Muslim organisations mentioned in the Tory report for quite a while. I would be very willing to report here if there was a shadowy conspiracy involved. I would imagine I would be able to make quite a name for myself and a fair bit of money with such exposure. But unfortunately there really isn’t much to tell. Most Muslim organisations struggle with baseline activities and getting very basic messages out, let alone develop proposals to take over the country and implement complex systems of law, education, economics and social welfare.

Cameron was also deliberately or otherwise vague on what type of shariah was he hitting out at. Shariah as a concept anywhere in the world? Or shariah in Britain? In any case the irony of his position is that it is forcing these Muslim bodies to come out and explain what shariah is. Hitherto it has not been on the agenda. There are so many pressing real priorities and just too much else to do.

The paranoia we see in the Tory report is the same as we’ve seen in the line of people through John Ware, Melanie Phillips and Martin Bright. Certainly the latter is quite open in claiming his work has contributed to the current Ruth Kelly line. The narrative is usually the same – Qaradawi comes to the UK, Mockbul Ali works at the Foreign Office, yada yada. The Tories repeated their claim that Michael Howard banned Qaradawi’s entry to the UK while he was Home Secretary. Not according to the shaikh’s passport he didn’t – though maybe he sneaked in wearing a burqa.

There are two distinct issues at play here. That Islamists or “Qaradawists” (new term employed by the Tory report) are a threat per se, and the matter of integration. The report accepts that Islamist groups - defined by the report as MCB, MAB, ISB and others – engage and encourage engagement in the democratic process. The claim is that they only do so to turn our country upside down.

If this was the strategy, it doesn’t stack up. If this engagement was a threat to our country, and revolution would take place via it, is this the best way of doing it or in any way likely to succeed? This is the nub of the matter here – attitudes like the Tory position are profoundly undemocratic. Even if this is what these Muslim groups are about we should not be scared of debate. Islamists are being accused of being supremacists, but it is non-Muslim political leaders who are shutting up shop when usually they love “debates”.

The Tories believe:

As Muslim communities enter the third generation of settlement in this country and in circumstances where a rapidly rising proportion have been educated here, it is anomalous and patronising to individuals to treat them indirectly as members of a group and not directly as citizens in their own individual right on a par with other voters.

Political ghettoisation is the wrong route. We recommend that an incoming Conservative Government moves in the opposite direction: to bring as many Muslims as possible as rapidly as possible into the mainstream of British life on an individual basis equal with that of their fellow non Muslim citizens.

However, any time there is a Muslim considered to have Islamist tendencies breaking away from the bosom of the Muslim groups, ploughing a furrow as a citizen, they get pilloried. I speak of course of Mockbul Ali, who seems to be the extent of Islamist infiltration. Never has a twenty-something civil servant caused so much consternation. Any view dissenting from the usual of the political chattering classes is dismissed as “Islamist propaganda” (see Martin Bright trashing the Mayor of London’s clash of civilisation conference – Ken can’t have an independent view, he must have been duped by evil Islamists).

The quote above sums up the anti-democratic message emanating from the Conservative Party this week. They, and the Policy Exchange report, advocate engaging with Muslims as “citizens” rather than with organisations that have been set up. Forget the fact that the MCB was only created in 1996 after decades of community relations had exposed the need for a Muslim organisation to engage with the authorities. Britain thus had a very good stint at not recognising Muslims as an entity at all - it didn't work. In any case, there is nothing stopping the government engaging with individual Muslims. Are the strategies mutually exclusive? Why are Muslims the only religious group not allowed to organise themselves?

We’re a week after the government’s altercation with the Catholic Church over gay adoption. The church puts forward an opinion – no one is saying that all Catholics fall into line with it. The Muslim community is of course not as straightforward in terms of its natural leadership – which is why it is open to attack – but no one can argue with its democratic underpinnings. Muslim organisations can join, elect its leadership every couple of years, and votes are taken on all major matters. This is what the Tories mean when they say other voices are “crowded out”.

So the constant sniping at the MCB should stop. The suggestion that Muslims uniquely are not allowed groups and to lobby is a ridiculous one. It’s even more galling that the same report then advocates two-bit outfits like the Sufi Muslim Council. It’s one or the other I’m afraid, but the contradiction betrays that this is about political viewpoints, not about principle.

Muslims are not going to take these charlatans to heart when even the Policy Exchange is finding that the community is taking its religion even more seriously than before, and that issues like foreign policy matter to them. The poll found that many did not list the known Muslim organisations as representing their views. The conclusion drawn was that the Muslim groups were therefore too radical vis a vis their people, but as anyone with any working knowledge of the Muslim community knows, it is entirely the other way round. The MCB have been accused of dancing with the devil, a viewpoint which many more will now see as accurate.

It’s not as if the Tories have ever had anything to do with the MCB anyway. It's almost as derisory as Labour’s pronouncement that they would receive no more funding, as if they were their sugar daddy lavishing riches and gifts upon them beforehand. The whole thing is about posturing, and is an abdication of leadership. It’s about who can look toughest and be seen doing something in the war on terror without really getting down to the nuts and bolts of the real job at hand. Sadly they are also alienating voices that will be crucial in bridging together East and West. Tumultuous times lie ahead globally in the next few years and Westminster will be central in much of it. On the strength of this, let’s hope David Cameron is nowhere near Number 10. Cameron promised a "crusade" at the start of the week. Just like George Bush's, this is what we don't need.

UPDATE: Also see Daniel Davies (comical but spot on), Maleiha Malik (essential historical perspective), Madeleine Bunting, Angela Phillips, and a letter by Brendan Barber, Sadiq Khan, Ken Livingston and Christina Odone. All links are from the Guardian - didn't find any decent comment anywhere else, though feel free to point out any more.