The Policy Exchange report into the Muslim community has come in for criticism since its publication. Prominently, Tariq Modood and (perhaps surprisingly and therefore significantly) Ziauddin Sardar wrote a letter to the Guardian.
The same newspaper then published a critique by Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning who are respectively director and deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Meanwhile, the Times carried an article by Policy Exchange research director Dean Godson, about the "struggle for the soul of Islam". Justifying the Tory position of sidelining all of Britain's main Muslim organisations, his point was that complaints from Muslims had to stop. Singling out Birmingham Central Mosque's Dr Naseem as an example, he said:
Dr Naseem can denounce 7/7 until el Andalus becomes Muslim again, but the fact remains that he caters to the sense of oppression that fuels jihadi violence.
This was after he said that Dr Naseem wasn't representative, that no one listens to him and that Muslims had had enough (before extolling the virtues of the Sufi Muslim Council of course). But the main point here is that it's not good enough that Muslims condemn Al-Qaeda terrorism anymore. They should also stop talking about Iraq and the erosion in this country's civil liberites. Forget the fact that these aren't just Muslim issues, Muslims uniquely now aren't allowed to bring them up. What the Tories are looking for are not Muslims to work with - they're looking for doormats with "Uncle Tom" written on them.
Or that you ignore the elephant in the living-room.
Posted by: aineliva | 17 February 2007 at 08:42 AM
Or that you ignore the elephant in the living-room.
Posted by: aineliva | 17 February 2007 at 08:43 AM