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Anger Burns on the Fringe of Britain's Muslims
LEEDS, England, July 15 - At Beeston's Cross Flats Park, in the center of this now embattled town, Sanjay Dutt and his friends grappled Friday with why their friend Kakey, better known to the world as Shehzad Tanweer, had decided to become a suicide bomber. Turns out, they're not really 'grappling', they get it just fine: "He was sick of it all, all the injustice and the way the world is going about it," Mr. Dutt, 22, said. "Why, for example, don't they ever take a moment of silence for all the Iraqi kids who die?" You mean the ones killed by al Queda the other day? "It's a double standard, that's why," answered a friend, who called himself Shahroukh, also 22, wearing a baseball cap and basketball jersey, sitting nearby. "I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen." Fortunately for the citizens of London, it appears Shahroukh would rather lecture the media while decked out in a rapper outfit. To the boys from Cross Flats Park, Mr. Tanweer, 22, who blew himself up on a subway train in London last week, was devout, thoughtful and generous. If they understood his actions, it was because they lived in Mr. Tanweer's world, too. They did not agree with what Mr. Tanweer had done, but made clear they shared the same sense of otherness, the same sense of siege, the same sense that their community, and Muslims in general, were in their view helpless before the whims of greater powers. Ultimately, they understood his anger. "Otherness" is the term coined by the late anti-semite Edward Said to describe how the West, under the control of the Zionists, culturally isolates wackos who want to blow us up. The news that four British-born Muslim men from neighborhoods around Leeds were suspected of carrying out the bombings in London has made the shared dissatisfaction of boys like these and the creeping militancy of some young British Muslims an urgent issue in Britain. And has been for a while because the Brits are too PC to do anything about it. The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised? Because their ungrateful parents and religion teach them to despise the very society that brings them material comfort unknown to their co-religionists in actual muslim countries. Logic and gratitude are not the hallmarks of islamic culture. Speak to young Muslims like Mr. Dutt and his friends in Leeds, or to others like Dr. Imram Waheed, 28, and Farouq Khan, 32, two Islamic activists living in Birmingham, another Muslim population center, and the answers seem clear. Each expresses the grievance in his own way, but the root is nearly the same. They say they are weary of liberal Muslim leaders and British politicians who promise changes. They see them backing policies against the Muslim world in general, from Iraq to the Middle East to Afghanistan, and promising relief from economic distress and discrimination. Still, Britain's Muslims have languished near the bottom of society since their influx here in the 1950's. "I know what people don't understand - it's how terrorists could have been born in this country," Shahroukh said. "But my point is, why not?" Because its a civilized country. A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian found that 84 percent of Muslims surveyed were against the use of violence for political means, but only 33 percent of Muslims said they wanted more integration into mainstream British culture. Almost half of those surveyed said their Muslim leadership did not represent their views. The grievances of the boys of Cross Flats Parks have not propelled them toward political action. But Dr. Waheed, a practicing psychiatrist, and Mr. Khan, a documentary filmmaker, are acting on their alienation. He may be 'practicing' but I cannot imagine he's any good at it. Both men, eloquent, better educated and better off than most in their community, are also among the more politically motivated. They have embraced one of the more conservative, if not militant, Islamic movements in Britain today - Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation. The party's stated goal is to rebuild the Caliphate - the Muslim state dissolved with the fall of the Ottoman Empire - to displace corrupt dictators in the Muslim world, and to instill Islamic mores and Islamicize almost every aspect of daily life. Then we'll have paradise on earth just like we did with Communism and Nazism. Looks like they've already raised a generatino of "Osama Youth." The group has drawn about 10,000 members to its recent annual meetings, its members say, and includes chapters abroad in places like Uzbekistan. It is a controversial movement, even among British Muslims, and its members have become emblematic of the shift of Muslims born in Britain to more conservative and outspoken expressions of their faith. Read the whole thing. It's full of depressing, first person examples of twisted logic, ingratitude for the benefits conveyed by the West and the hateful ideological strains by the combination of the two. Posted by: JAB 2005-07-16 |
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