Image Credit: Economist
On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged £665 million in aid over the next four years to Pakistan. Although much of the financial assistance will be geared towards Pakistan’s counter-terrorism (and hopefully, counterinsurgency) operations, £125 million will be earmarked for supporting education projects in the border area “in an effort to stop the spread of extremism,” reported Dawn. The announcement came just a day before Britain ended its combat operations in Iraq, a sign the UK, like the United States, is also shifting more attention to the volatile Af-Pak border areas.
The pledge and Brown’s corresponding statements also highlighted an attempt to address the alleged “chain of terror” between the Pakistan and the United Kingdom. On April 8, British police arrested 12 men on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist plot. Ten were Pakistani citizens on student visas. Although it is still not clear whether it was actually a terrorist plot, and charges against the students were dropped, the incident sparked a “diplomatic row” between London and Islamabad.
In an interview with the Guardian, Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner to London, said Britain appeared vindictive against Pakistani nationals, adding that claims Islamabad was soft on terror were slurs. He told the news agency, “Pointing a finger towards Pakistan was shocking for us … it was uncalled for and shocking..Pakistan’s name is dragged into the mud on every opportunity … either we are allies, or we are not.”
The Guardian noted in its coverage, “Tension between Islamabad and London over terrorism has been rising for months. In December, Brown claimed 75% of the plots Britain faced were linked to Pakistan…” In this most recent development, UK officials physically searched the students’ houses and seized computers but found no evidence of any connection to this alleged terrorist plot. Nevertheless, they have been remanded into the custody of the UK Border agency, pending their deportation. An editorial in Dawn earlier this week noted,
Can Mr. Brown, who was in Pakistan the other day, answer this one simple question: what is their crime? Every single student rounded up by the police was in the UK on a valid visa. Not one shred of evidence that could stand up in court could be produced against any of the young men now in custody. Is this justice? No, it is not.
Gordon Brown may not realize that false accusations, arrests, and seizures of Pakistanis do little to keep the UK safe from terror. Instead, such actions exacerbate tensions further, not only between Islamabad and London, but also among the UK’s Pakistani community. Moreover, while the PM may contend that three-quarters of the terror plots in Britain are linked to Pakistan, blame cannot be shifted one-way. An article in last week’s Economist entitled, “The Immigration Superhighway,” reported that each year 250,000 Pakistanis come to Britain to visit, work or marry, and some 350,000 British-Pakistanis journey to Pakistan, mostly to visit family. And while the oft-porous border between the two nations has raised concerns, not everyone agrees that Islamist extremism is the fault of Pakistan alone.
In Londonistan, written after the July 7, 2005 bombings in London (also known as the 7/7 attacks), Melanie Phillips wrote about the increasing alienation of Muslims in Britain, as well as the rise of extremism among this community. Her basic premise was that Britain largely created the culture that bred Islamic terrorism. British authorities have certainly done very little to discourage it, and in many ways exacerbated this influence. She wrote,
Driven by post-colonial guilt and, with the loss of empire, the collapse of a world role, Britain’s elites [establishment] have come to believe that the country’s identity and values are by definition racist, nationalistic and discriminatory. Far from transmitting or celebrating the country’s fundamental values, therefore, they have tried to transform a national culture into a multicultural society, both in terms of the composition of the country and the values it embodies.
Ultimately, noted Phillips, current British society has replaced tradition with an ‘anything goes’ culture, in which decisions about one’s code of ethics or behavior “become unchallengeable rights.” The ramifications of such an approach has been significant.
The author cited a poll conducted after 7/7, which revealed “a dismaying amount of anti-British feeling among Britain’s Muslim citizens.” Although the overwhelming majority of British Muslims polled rejected violence, one in ten supported the July 7th attacks, while 5% said that more attacks in the UK would be justified. And, in another poll, while 56% said Muslims should accept Western society, 32 % believed that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.”
A February 2009 article by Ed Husain, author of The Islamist and co-director of the British think tank Quillam, cited a poll conducted by the institute regarding mosques in Britain, [Husain noted there are between 1,200 and 1,600 mosques in the country, although no definite figure exists]. The Quillam report, Mosques Made in Britain, found that 97% of imams, or leaders, were from overseas and 92% were educated abroad, mostly in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Almost all mosques are controlled by first-generation immigrant men, leaving most British Muslims – women and young people – out of the management structure. Husain asserted,
Britain’s mosques are run by men who are physically in Britain, but psychologically in Pakistan. They retain their village rituals and sectarianism, and prevent the growth of an indigenous British Islam. And for as long as young Muslims are confused about whether they belong in Britain or elsewhere, we risk handing them over to preying extremists in our midst.
It is important, however, not to paint the British Muslim community with one stroke. Not all British Muslims or British Pakistanis are religious, and not all those who are religious fall into the category of extremists. However, the fact remains that the alienation experienced by many in the immigrant Pakistani or Muslim communities is a dangerous phenomenon. Within this confusion, many Muslims, particularly young men, have subsequently turned to more radical seminaries, jihadi chat rooms, and extremist websites for guidance.
In the case of Britain, this “religious guidance” is impacted further by the influence of the aforementioned first-generation immigrant imams. And, bringing this back to the terror link discussion earlier, the subsequent radicalization can have serious ramifications for the porous border between Britain and Pakistan. I’d contend that while Gordon Brown claims Pakistan exports terror to the UK, it seems that Pakistan may also import extremism from the UK. The blame goes both ways.
This is not to say that this radicalized generation are the victims in this scenario. In fact, although many British Pakistanis feel alienated from society, so to do many distance themselves, thereby perpetuating this cycle. Gordon Brown must therefore walk a precariously thin line, taking a firmer stance on terror without inflaming an already volatile community further. The British government must also realize that blame cannot be shifted just to Pakistan without recognizing their role in this cycle of radicalization. Only then can both our governments even attempt to be “partners” against this war on terror.
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Pleeeeeeeeassseeeeee (pretty please) don’t take Melanie Phillips seriously. She is a miserable, right-wing anti-multicultural swine who writes a weekly Islamophobic hate-filled bile column that passes for her Daily Mail column. I mean, she has previously argued that Palestine is a terrorist population, for christsake. In this article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1033189/This-country-pro-Muslim-giving-succour-extremists-destroy-us.html) she argues that Islam itself is totally a violent religion – that the religion itself teaches terrorism – and we’d only all be OK if we totally embraced Christianity. She’s Britain’s cheerleader par excellence for those who see suspicion in everything British Muslims do in this country. The only thing that runs through her veins is hate.
Essentially she is saying that the rise of permissive society in Britain (whateverthatis) caused the July 7 bombers to run into the underground. Somehow her argument runs that if we were to cling to our country’s identity (please, again, what the hell does that mean? may poll dances? obsessive tea drinking?) then underground bombers might have been keen morris dancers? If we all wore longer skirts and had sex less then they would have been more drawn into solemn recitations of God Save the Queen more and would do nutty interpretations of Islam less? This tells you less about the reality of British Muslims and more about her prejudices about modern society. It ignores the socio-political context of the late 1990s and early 21st century in Britain and the world, the Bradford riots, racism, our wonderful foreign policy, and the economic reality on the ground. None of these things *cause* terrorism but they have set the stage. Permissive society as one big cause doesn’t stand to scrutiny.
Multiculturalism means we get along. It means we don’t have assimilation – it means that the kind of policies which meant my mother lost her mother tongue (Italian) at school and was told not speak it at home no longer exist. It isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t cause teenage pregnancy and it isn’t why people died on the underground in 2005. What Phillips would like to do is reverse all that and force everyone to go down the church on Sunday, handing out a standard identity and punishing those that don’t stick to it.
That would cause all kinds of hell.
Thanks Saesneg-
I was actually waiting for someone to make your point about Phillips. I took what she wrote with a grain of salt, but I do think there is a point behind what she meant.
I do think Britain has been largely permissive because of this desire to be politically correct and embrace the vast numbers of ethnic and religious groups. With the British Pakistani or Muslim population, this has meant that the previous rise of extremism was not met with a sense of alarm with the government, but them saying “anything goes.”
Obviously, though, that’s not the only root cause, and I apologize if that made my post stunted – the alienation felt by this community may in part be caused by British policies, but the circular perpetuation of this alienation was of course entrenched by the factors you mentioned above, including the race riots, (perhaps a reaction to the permissiveness?).
The Daniel Pipes recommendation on the back of her book kind of tipped me off about her leanings
but I did think that one point was pretty significant, not to explain the entire situation but perhaps highlight a cause for alienation.
I still don’t get the permissiveness argument, sorry. I don’t think people have learned to accept extremism, regardless of how sensitive we are now about culture and religion. You could argue Britain’s been permissive because we’ve allowed extremist groups to exist, but without people acting violently there’s not a lot you can do against a group of people sat talking crap around a table. Sadly this is the risk you take in having a democracy – people are free to speak, and sometimes they say things we don’t like. It means we have the BNP and Hizb. And i’m not one for locking up people for their views, regardless of how horrid they might be.
As an aside, the race riots of 2000/2001 were largely provoked by far-right nationalist groups such as the BNP coming into towns such as Bradford…
Saesneg,
Sorry let me restate – what I meant was that they were permissive about allowing groups to do what they want, not that they were permissive about extremism, I apologize for my lack coherence. I agree that the UK allowed people to preach their beliefs and practice what they wanted provided they didn’t break laws, etc.
Do you think there’s a line with freedom of speech? I know in the U.S., that line has been blurred with the Patriot Act etc. – so the question remains that in order to keep the country “safe” where do you draw the line?
Kalsoom, can’t reply in thread for some reason…
To do what though? Set up mosques and temples? This is the problem M Phillips and her ilk have. They see any form of non-Christian cultural or religious expression as a threat. I don’t really see what choice Britain had to make. Should we stop girls from wearing head scarves, like in France, and alienate those who choose to don them?
As for freedom of speech, Nick Griffin is perfectly entitled to go rambling on about how we’re all slowly turning Muslim – I wouldn’t like my newspaper to give him a platform though and I generally agree with the Race Relations Act provisions on stirring up racial hatred, whereby someone directing a group to attack another on racial grounds is effectively illegal.
No, no, and I’m not prescribing to M Phillips point of view at all. I was merely highlighting her point about permissiveness – I don’t buy the extent she obviously meant according to you, but I think there is something to be said about the British policy of ‘anything goes.’ The government should not be able to oppress freedom of expression, particularly when it comes to your personal practice of religion. As a Muslim and as a woman, I think the people who stop women from wearing hijabs are just as bad as the people who force women to cover their heads – ultimately, a woman, and all people, should have the freedom to choose how they want to practice religion.
But in Britain, some members of the community consider anyone who doesn’t follow their beliefs as “kafirs” (unbelievers). They preach these views pretty openly, because they consider it a freedom of expression. We should all have the freedom of expression — but we still need to show respect for others. We obviously can’t condone racism on either side – and we have to recognize how racism towards Muslims perpetuates the problem as well – it is a complex issue. But unfortunately, there have been many suspects in terror plots who are of British Asian origin. We need to find the root of the problem — and figure out how to stem it.
thank you for this very informative post- it was very interesting to read what Husain and Phillips have to say about the current situation British Muslims are facing. I have heard a lot about Ed Husain in the media but never read his work. How interesting, that he says, “…men who are physically in Britain, but psychologically in Pakistan.” To an extent, all of us Asians living in the UK or elsewhere (abroad) are guilty of this. Perhaps what is worrying is that they are of a more radical kind, and shun the society in which they live. How do you feel about this, as a Pakistani living abroad?
Re the £125m earmarked for education, my feeling is that this is going to be in corrupt hands, eventually and the money will be squandered on non -educ related “goods”. What are your views on this? If only Pakistan could look toward Bangladesh for their education policies-and achieve high levels of female literacy, the way they successfully did in the late 90′s.
Thanks for your comments SOS,
I think you make an important point – if someone is psychologically in Pakistan, what makes them become radical versus more cultured? In my case, I grew up in Islamabad, Pakistan and then came abroad, and I grew up in a fairly liberal and secular family. I’m guessing families that immigrate from more provincial and less-educated circumstances may come from a diff place than say, we do.
I know the US money that will be earmarked for education and health will go through USAID, who design programs using the funding (they need to work on their implementation structure) and give out the money that way, but I’m not sure about the UK structure – if anyone else could chime in that would be great
The Brits are very paranoid. Even more so than the Americans since 7/7 is still relatively fresh. Did you know that most of the cameras that they have are in desi localities?
I understand that maybe the paranoia keeps them safe but there’s always a certain extent to how much you can do until it starts becoming oppressive.
I’m an Asian, who’s been living in London for 12 years. And I can tell you the Brits on a whole are NOT paranoid. The July 7th attacks were unfortunate, but not unexpected. After 9/11, many of us expected an attack in the UK, because of Britain’s close relationship with the US. The day after 7/7, people were back on the tubes/buses. Many have lived through the threat of IRA attacks, so they’re used to security measures, and they tend to get on with their lives. In terms of CCTVs, London is said to be the MOST CCTV’d city in the world, but we don’t notice them and they don’t make us paranoid. There’s a lot of surveillance across the country because the reality is the UK is a target. I realise there have been mistakes and the authorities must apologise and make amends for those. But there are many measures that are probably helping to keep the population safe… and at the end of the day, that’s what we all want!
I’ll be the first to admit when I’m wrong. I guess I was just reiterating what I’ve heard through the grapevine i.e. media, word of mouth etc.
And I understand that a lot of stuff can get convoluted. Thanks for correcting me when I’m wrong. I’ve been to London quite a few times myself and I can tell you that I’ve loved my experience.
I actually wouldn’t mind living in London long-term.
Most CCTV is useless anyway. Too many cameras, lazy eyes, and generally useless for anything except securing against drunken street fighters.
Man those drunken street fighters. They are a rowdy lot.
Thanks for this post, Kalsoom! Very interesting. A lot of us have been quite disturbed about how the Pakistanis have been arrested and it could have been any one of us. I actually haven’t read Ed Husain’s stuff before and will look into it in more detail as well.
I like how you have written “It is important, however, not to paint the British Muslim community with one stroke. Not all British Muslims or British Pakistanis are religious, and not all those who are religious fall into the category of extremists. However, the fact remains that the alienation experienced by many in the immigrant Pakistani or Muslim communities is a dangerous phenomenon. Within this confusion, many Muslims, particularly young men, have subsequently turned to more radical seminaries, jihadi chat rooms, and extremist websites for guidance.”
On a different note, for anyone who is interested and currently in London, please see below.
Say NO to the Talebanisation of Pakistan!
Host: People of Pakistan
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location: Pakistan High Commission, Lowndes Square, London
Dear Friends,
We are trying to organise a large demo outside the Pak High Commission at midday on May 6. Pakistanis are doing the same on that day in NYC. We want to say NO to Talibanisation and put the responsibility squarely on Pak army to protect us and shake off their proteges, the Taliban. The army has nurtured them for dominance in Afghanistan, to prevent peace with India and to maintain their stranglehold over Pakistan. Civilian politicians are helpless in the face of the army’s obduracy.
I know many of you will feel that a demo outside the High Commission cannot accomplish much but it will accomplish more than silence. Please join in and bring as many friends as you can.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Many thanks,
Moni Mohsin
Thanks Omar- I hope people based in London and NYC will be able to make that event.
Ed Husain’s story is an interesting one, and his book The Islamist, chronicles his five years as a member of an extremist group. He currently heads Quillam, which is a counterterrorism think tank.
K – Where is Quillam based? What country?
UK – it’s based in London.
Hey excellent post, very comprehensive and I’ve been wondering about that whole arrest incident and how no investigative pieces have come out of it. They probably have but I’ve missed them. I think the whole radicalization of some Muslim youth in the UK def has to do with a simple identity crisis being exploited by radical recruiters. This including the other reasons stated by people above, and as a result of some of the reasons stated above. The imams in a lot of these mosques, who are psychologically in pakistan,’I think are more psychologically in the UK and as a result trying to instill what they think are fundamentally pakistani and muslim values. Therefore, in this effort of instilling tradition among their followers, they propagate more fundamental and radical versions of pak/islam. And the youth who have not been exposed ‘physically’ to pakistan and its diverse culture, therefore absorb that as the ‘real pakistan/real islam.’
Again this is just a personal interpretation of the situation. A lot of pakistanis grow up in the uk, integrate successfully, and manage to retain their traditions as well.or integrate and forget their traditions, or don’t integrate and don’t become violent either. I think in recent times, the general resurgence of religiosity in the muslim world’s youth, just allows these disconnected youngsters to misinterpret their tradtions and homelands. And in the process some of them become violently radicalized, while others sympathize with the muslim (or some may say anti-western) cause (or what they are taught is the ’cause’ in mosques and street corners) while those same sympathizers may never act on it.I know pretty convoluted sentence! ahahaha.writing from a phone because the electricity in pakistan is as reliable as our politicians.
It seems to me that the stereotypes of islam that circulate in the entertainment and news media in the west are perpetuated by by muslims in the uk and the us as well. By this I mean that an imam who is in the uk and hasn’t been to pakistan in 15 years also swallows the notion that pakistans islam is wahhabi and therefore to cling to his identity he subscribes to that ideology and propagates it during his sermon. A stretch? Maybe.but I think that is happening at least on some level. It is not the british governments responsibilit to teach immigrant communities what their culture and religion is about. That starts in the home. I understand that some become alienated and as a result go down the wrong path, but again that is not an excuse for radicalization.there is so much racism and religious bigotry in pakistan but christians for instance, aren’t forming terrorist groups here. So I don’t know if racism and foreign policy is grounds enough to explain extremism there.I think muslim communities are to be held responsible for not teaching their kin what their countries and religion is about.that being said racism and foreign policy of course does not help in that and some people are just more vulnerable to extreme views or actions.it is muslim clerics around the world who are the biggest idiots for miles, who remain silent because of their so called anti-imperialist/colonial views and therefore remain silent while there religion is hijacked. Sorry thought I’d toss that in.
Thanks Shaheryar.
Here’s an interesting article by Nadim Paracha last week about a conversation he has with a young man who grew up in Manchester and moved to Pakistan after 7/7. It’s really interesting and very much exemplifies what we’ve been talking about:
http://dawntravelshow.com/dblog/2009/04/30/questions-about-burning/
hey thanks that was awesome..very interesting..read almost like a fictional conversation actually!ahahhaha, but not doubting the authenticity..
Yeah Nadim Paracha is a little kooky but very funny. Check out the article he wrote about a fictional interview between a Taliban member and a journalist. I literally was cracking up as I read it, it’s titled, “Lord of Flog” http://dawntravelshow.com/dblog/2009/04/23/lord-of-flog/
hahahahah that was pretty ridiculous…