Fighting the Enemies Within [The Guardian]

August 18, 2006

It's not going to be easy, but it's got to be done.

After a recent article in the Sunday Times, it has become topical to speak of Britain's "enemies within". Such enemies do exist; in fact, there are several.

One such enemy - the most widely acknowledged within Britain in general, and within the Muslim community in particular - is a deviant doctrine that allows wanton violence. Normative Islamic teachings do not justify this, and Muslims know it.That does not translate into most of them being able to do a heck of a lot about the really extreme end of it in the short-term. Heretics hide their views most completely from the orthodox within their own flock; after all, they have no compunction in killing them and considering their deaths collateral damage.Muslim organisations might not be perfect (what organisations are?), but no one should be in any doubt that radical extremists would wipe most of them out without the slightest bit of hesitation. We should criticise them, certainly, but not unreasonably so. After all, in the long term, many Muslim organisations and voluntary sector organisations with sufficient resources could probably make a huge positive difference. But that is in the long term, and we'd better get cracking now on helping them - with a critical eye, certainly, but not castigating them wholesale.In the short term, many within the Muslim community already actively assist in the counter-terrorist effort; just because they're not on the 6 o'clock news doesn't mean they don't exist. Representational appropriateness and professional ability is seldom the same thing. Those unsung heroes exist, and could use much more support in this website - writemypaper4me.org.We should not expect they are in representational roles: that's a different arena altogether, and if it weren't, we'd elect every member of the civil service. If the home secretary's assessment that so many terrorist plots have been broken is correct, its safe to assume it was with Muslim involvement. Ask the police. Of course, if we start racial profiling and allow standards of policing drop, that might begin to change. Ask the police that too.But another enemy within Britain - and a moral depravity on no less a scale - is the perception that our "national interest" permits us to perpetrate incredible injustices upon innocent civilians abroad. Our foreign policies give violent extremists a motive to commit criminal acts and attack our society; there's no excuse for it, but that's the way it is. Does that mean our government should change its policies because of terrorists? In a word, no. Bad policies should not be changed because of threats. Bad policies should be changed because they're bad.But criminal acts give other types of extremists - other enemies within - the excuse to mar our society, in the short-term and the long-term, by pushing us further away from the principles of respect, decency and justice.What makes this particularly distasteful is that it is on the disingenuous pretext of protecting our values as Britons.The future of this country is being built on a marriage between esteem for diversity and respect for a common citizenship: a multiculturalist patriotism, or a patriotic multiculturalism, if you will. (In truth, Britain has always been based on that relationship to some extent. Modernity makes everything go a bit too fast for people to catch their breath, but that's another story entirely.)Taking advantage of a threat on our country to push for some sort of narrow vision that excludes huge numbers of Britons, instead of bringing them together in a real cohesive social contract, is not the action of a patriot. On the contrary. Britain as a whole has to renew her sense of self, without failing to uphold the sense of integrity that makes all Britons - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - grateful to be British. It's not going to be easy, but it's got to be done.This is still a country worth fighting for. Lets make sure we're fighting the right enemies in the right way. Otherwise, the Britain that prevails will be a poor shadow of what we are fighting for today; and then, indeed, the "enemies within" will have won.Source: The Guardian