Terror and Enemies Within: Fighting the Right Battles for Britain [Jurist]
August 18, 2006
After a recent editorial in the UK's Sunday Times (one of Britain's most mainstream newspapers), it has become topical to speak of Britain's "enemies within". After the widely reported arrests in connection with an alleged plot to blow up passenger planes flying from the UK to US airports, that's hardly surprising, particularly when a particular faith community seemed to contribute the suspects.
Such enemies within 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.
Some British commentators complain that Muslim organizations are not angelic and are not wholly representative of the communities they claim to represent. Well, Muslim organizations might not be perfect (what organizations 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 organizations and voluntary sector organizations with sufficient resources could probably make a huge positive difference. But that is in the long term, and the British 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 (and probably don't care to be on) 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 to write my paper for me. We should not expect they are in representational roles: that's a different arena altogether, and if it weren't, we'd all elect every member of our civil services. 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 London Metropolitan Police. Of course, if the British start racial profiling and allow standards of policing to drop, that might begin to change. Ask the London Metropolitan 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. British 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 the British 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 British society, in the short-term and the long-term, by pushing Britons 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 Britain 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. Britain 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.
Based at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick (UK) as an Associate Fellow, H.A Hellyer is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Law, American University in Cairo (Egypt) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). After 7/7, he was nominated as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government's Home Office working group on 'Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation'. Recently asked to speak on European identity and Islam on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and a conference sponsored by the World Economic Forum in Copenhagen on Muslim in the West, he argues in his book ''Islam in Europe: Multiculturalism and the European 'Other'" (IB Tauris: March 2007) that Europe must come to terms with all of her history, past and present, and that Muslim communities should work to be integral to, rather than simply 'integrated' parts of, Europe.
Source: Jurist