| | BBC Newsnight yesterday featured a segment on the government’s Contest 2 strategy and the interference by the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears in the MCB. Blears has written to the MCB demanding the resignation of the organisation’s deputy secretary general, Dr Daud Abdullah (pictured), on grounds of his endorsing the Gaza Declaration in Istanbul.
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Blears wrote to the MCB urging that it depose Dr Daud Abdullah, despite his elected post, or face the consequences of disengagement. It would appear the MCB’s non attendance of Holocaust Memorial Day this year has further stoked the government’s determination to force the organisation to demonstrate its commitment to ‘shared values’.
This is not the first time the government has sought to manipulate policy in the MCB through the threat of isolation. Blears’ predecessor, Ruth Kelly, did much the same in 2006 when she placed attendance at Holocaust Memorial Day as a pre-condition to future engagement.
The Newsnight segment is revealing of just what ‘shared values’ is going to mean for Muslims in Britain and what ‘engaging with the Muslim community’ will consist of.
The report by Richard Watson for Newsnight featured an interview with Toaha Qureshi of the Stockwell Green mosque in South London (an MCB affiliate). However, Watson also interviewed that utter non-entity and self-publicist Taj Hargey, of the tiny Muslim Education Centre in Oxford. Hargey's ludicrous antics were memorably exposed in an Ummah Pulse analysis last year. Interviewing the two which do you suppose Watson questioned about the MCB? That’s right, Taj Hargey.
Hargey obliged, naturally, by saying that the MCB is an ‘extremist group’, which is influenced by 'Wahhabism' and thus ‘does not represent the majority’ and that though it may count many among its affiliates, it actually ‘represents a minority’.
All of this is of course very interesting.
No democracy requires a threshold to entry into the public sphere where exchanging views is concerned (barring the legal restrictions), and whether the MCB is representative of a minority or a majority does not preclude it from enjoying legitimacy or the right to express an opinion. One might ask Hargey whether his own idiosyncratic view – best captured in his sponsoring the prayer lead by Amina Wadud, at which more journalists were present than worshippers (much like at an Al Muhajiroun publicity stunt) – is representative? And of whom? And does his being a minority view prevent him from speaking out on issues?
Second, the MCB is an organisation that contains various theological and ideological strands – an umbrella organisation could do no less unless its purpose was homogenisation, and it is clear from the MCB’s list of over 500 affiliated organisations that this is not the case. Of course Watson does not ask Hargey to substantiate the allegation that the MCB is a 'Wahhabist' organisation, nor does he pose the question to Toaha Qureshi who, as an affiliate of the MCB, might usefully have provided an informed response.
Richard Watson also interviews two young Muslims in the feature both of whom explain that radical views are not undone through proscription but through open contestation and challenge. This has been the position articulated by the MCB from the outset and something that the episode involving Daud Abdullah illustrates.
The MCB, like many British Muslims, has maintained that a democracy that makes a pretence of recognising and dealing with contesting views, particularly those that challenge the government, will only widen the space in which extremists operate by closing off the parameters to legitimate debate.
In seeking the resignation of Daud Abdullah, Hazel Blears’ action reveals the dissonance that will only grow between the government and British Muslims if it continues to believe that it can silence opinion through intimidation and bullying.
And let’s not forget what lies at the heart of the episode involving Daud Abdullah – his signing of the Gaza Declaration which makes a point of upholding the Palestinians’ right to resist occupation. It is useful to note here the question posed by Sir Gerald Kaufman in the House on Jan 19 2009:
‘In welcoming the increased aid from the UK to Gaza, may I ask my right hon. Friend [Foreign Secretary, David Miliband] to clarify the logic whereby we can send the Royal Navy to enforce an arms ban on Hamas while continuing to sell arms to Israel, after a conflict in which 1,200 Palestinians were slaughtered and four Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets? That is an exchange rate of one Israeli life for 300 Palestinian lives’.
It is the cowardly weakness shown by the international community in preventing the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza while continuing to trade in arms with Israel that lies at the bottom of this controversy. And no matter how contentious this issue, it will not go away. Nor will British Muslims, including ENGAGE, cease to hold the government to account for a policy on Palestine that makes a mockery of our government’s so called commitment to the Middle East Peace Process and sincere efforts in conflict resolution. You can convey your views on the piece featured in last night's programme to Richard Watson, reporter for Newsnight and the programme editor, Peter Rippon, by phone on 03700 100 222, through the online feedback form here, or in writing to: The Editor
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