Good Muslim, bad Muslim

Monday, June 19, 2006

It seems to be let's support the Muslims week. That comes after let's raid a Muslim family's house and shoot one of them week. Sir Trevor Phillips, head of the CRE and never anything but a moderate on issues of race, has criticised the Forest Gate raid. 'It is clear that something went wrong on this occasion. But it's not the first time. We've seen thousands of British Muslims arrested under anti-terror legislation. Virtually all of them released without charge'.

Too right, Trevor. But it isn't just about the raid. Remember the headlines on all the papers about the raid, about the 'chemical vest' the police were looking for, the bomb factory, the threat to the whole area (although no neighbours were evacuated)? Remember the story in the News of the World that one of the brothers had shot the other? Remember the story in the Metro that another brother had been on a demonstration against the Danish cartoons?

All false. But where are the rebuttals of same point size or prominence? They don't exist. So this becomes another raid where probably millions read or hear the lies, but a fraction of that get the truth when it eventually seeps out.

It's enough to make a liberal commentator blush. That must be why so many of them have come out, however hesitantly, to defend Muslims. But, wait, they're only defending Muslims against the rest of us. Phillips praises their restraint in the face of the raid. Nick Cohen in the Observer has claimed a direct line from the Muslim community showing that they're not angry at all (that's just the left). Unfortunately the very same day that his column appeared, 2000 Muslims joined a local march.

They weren't angry according to the tabloid press stereotype. No one dressed up as suicide bombers or denouncing secularism. But they were angry according to the march's official statement, which called for the following: a full and unqualified apology from the Metropolitan police; an end to police privately 'briefing' newspapers; an end to politicisation of the police force; a demand that Muslims were not prepared to live in fear or be silenced; an end to the association of Islam with terrorism; a full apology from the prime minister; the war on terror to be urgently reviewed.

Howard Jacobson took me to task in the Independent for suggesting that these raids might even drive people to terrorism. This apparently was a slur on Muslims because it implied that they might respond in such a violent way to something like this. Surely the real slur on Muslims is to repeatedly portray them as extremists, terrorists, suicide bombers or religious fanatics.

Isn't it then a bit rich for journalists to praise Muslims for not responding to a stereotype that was largely a media creation in the first place!

Praise though to an unlikely ally. Johann Hari has written some splendid attacks on the celebrity TV historian Niall Ferguson, in which Hari has accurately portrayed the British empire as a bloody and oppressive affair. Ferguson's thesis (or one of them) is that the break up of empires leads to ethnic divisions (aka why the troops should stay in Iraq). Seems a bit self serving to me _ not to mention selective. The week we remembered the anniversary of the Soweto uprising doesn't seem a good one to praise the white man's burden.

6/19/2006 01:33:00 PM | Permalink