Author:
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 4, 2001
Since September 11 the West, and
especially America, has seen a spate of attacks on Muslims in their midst.
Men have been beaten, women intimidated, children taunted. Even those with
no connection to Islam, such as Sikhs, have been set upon because of their
beards and dark skin. Such appalling racism and intolerance have been forcefully
condemned by Western leaders. President Bush has praised Islam as a tolerant
religion; Tony Blair has invited prominent Muslims to Downing Street to
insist that the West has no quarrel with Islam and that those who carried
out the atrocities should be seen not as Muslim terrorists but simply as
terrorists.
Such determined assaults on prejudice,
however, have not been helped by the victims themselves. Muslim religious
leaders have denounced the threats to their community, demanded protection
for mosques and warned Western leaders against any strikes on Islamic countries.
A conference last weekend on Islamophobia denounced what it saw as institutional
prejudice in the press, called for greater support from opinion-makers
and demanded fairer access to the Establishment. It was less vocal on the
essential first step from the Muslim community itself: widespread and unambiguous
condemnation of the terrorists and those who support them.
With characteristic directness Baroness
Thatcher summed up the demand: "I have not heard enough condemnation from
Muslim priests," she said. "The people who brought down those towers were
Muslims, and Muslims must stand up and say that that is not the way of
Islam." They must go further. Because extremists claim to act on behalf
of, and in the name of, Islam, they besmirch all fellow believers. There
is no association between Islam and violence; but those complaining of
prejudice should not be surprised by this false Western assumption if they
do not counter the claims of the fanatics. If moderates are to win the
argument against the hatred preached by ignorant mullahs, they must do
more to stop the recruitment of boys from Birmingham or Finsbury Park to
explode bombs in Yemen or Kashmir.
Christian leaders often speak of
extending the hand of tolerance to Islam; it would be helpful to hear similar
reciprocal language. Muted condemnation of politically motivated jihad,
attempts at sociological explanation, vagueness in the interests of confessional
solidarity are the enemies of understanding between Christianity and Islam.
British Muslims are, overwhelmingly, appalled at what terrorism has done
to their image. Those who expound Islam's tenets should make that revulsion
explicit.
