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'After the Rushdie affair, Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder'
Our capital is now 'Londonistan', the hub of Islamist extremism, argues Melanie Phillips in her provocative new book. In this explosive extract she traces the impact of one disturbing episode

In 1988, the novelist and British citizen Salman Rushdie published his novel, The Satanic Verses. A bitter satire on Islam which understandably gave serious offence, its publication provoked uproar in the Islamic world with protests in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that led to the deaths of five Muslims. Shortly afterwards, in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, sentencing Rushdie to death for writing the book, along with 'all involved in its publication who were aware of its content'. As a result, Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for many years and to live the life of a highly guarded fugitive, with a bounty on his head for anyone who succeeded in killing him.

This incitement to murder a British subject and his associates in the publishing world set the Muslim community in Britain alight. Literally so - they burned the book in the street, in scenes uncomfortably reminiscent of Nazi Germany. There was a positive feeding frenzy of incitement. Sayed Abdul Quddus, the secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques, claimed that Rushdie had 'tortured Islam' and deserved to pay the penalty by 'hanging'.

Speaking in Bradford, where the first demonstrations against the book took place, he said: 'Muslims here would kill him and I would willingly sacrifice my own life and that of my children to carry out the ayatollah's wishes should the opportunity arise.' Dr Kalim Siddiqui, director of the Iranian-backed Muslim Institute, shouted at a meeting: 'I would like every Muslim to raise his hand in agreement with the death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Let the world see that every Muslim agrees that this man should be put away.'

The importance of this episode and the no less significant reaction to it by the British establishment can hardly be overestimated. Such scenes were unprecedented in Britain. The home of freedom of speech was playing host to the burning of books and an openly homicidal witch-hunt. Yet not one person who called for Rushdie to be killed was prosecuted for incitement to murder. The most the government could bring itself to say was that such comments were 'totally unacceptable'.

On the contrary, they seemed to be not only accepted but even endorsed by certain members of the British establishment. Far from universal condemnation of this murderous expression of religious fanaticism, various people used their public position to jump prematurely upon Rushdie's grave. Eminent historian Lord Dacre said he 'would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring Mr Rushdie's manners, were to waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them'. In Leicester, Labour MP Keith Vaz led a 3,000-strong demonstration intent on burning an effigy of Rushdie and carried a banner showing Rushdie's head, complete with horns and fangs, superimposed on a dog.

Here in microcosm were the key features of what would only much later be recognised as a major and systematic threat to the state and its values. There was the murderous incitement; the flagrant defiance of both the rule of law and free speech; the religious fanaticism; the emergence of British Muslims as a distinct and hostile political entity; and the supine response by the British establishment. What was also on conspicuous display was the mind-twisting, back-to-front reasoning that is routinely used by many Muslims to turn their own violent aggression into victimhood. Muslim leaders claimed that the refusal by the British government to ban The Satanic Verses showed that Muslims in Britain were under attack, with the political and literary establishment trying to destroy their most cherished values. 'They are rapidly coming to the conclusion that they will have to fight to defend Islam in Britain,' said Dr Kalim Siddiqui of his community.

Of course, it was Britain that was under attack from an Islamism that required the British state to dump its most cherished values in order to placate the Muslim minority. Yet this was promptly inverted to claim that it was Islam that was under attack. Thus, Islamist violence was justified and its victim blamed instead for aggression, the pattern that has come to characterise the Muslim attitude to conflict worldwide.

The Rushdie affair became a rallying cause for Muslim consciousness. It was the point at which British Muslims became politicised and hitched their faith to a violent star. According to writer Kenan Malik, Muslim radicals had until then been on the left, not religious and against the mosque. Now, fired by resentment at the apparent insult by the Rushdie book, they became transformed into religious radicals and formed the pool of discontents for militant Islamic groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which began organising in Britain, particularly on campus, in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

When Khomeini died in 1989, British Muslims reiterated that the death sentence on Rushdie still stood. A spokesman for the Council of Mosques said: 'We are talking about the Islamic revival.' It was at that point, therefore, that the promotion of Islam in Britain became fused with an agenda of murder.

Hard on the heels of this seismic episode came two further key developments. The Bosnian war was another major radicalising factor for British Muslims. They watched the appalling scenes of Bosnian Muslims being massacred by their Christian neighbours. What made this carnage so much worse was that it was taking place in the middle of secular, multicultural Europe. The Muslims being wiped out were pale skinned and clothed in jeans and track shoes. They looked and behaved like any other Europeans.

And yet Britain and Europe were dragging their heels about doing anything to stop the slaughter. So British Muslims believed that it was Islam that was under attack and that they, too, were unsafe and threatened in a country which had so conspicuously failed to view the massacre of Muslims with any concern. With their sense of victimisation thus accelerating by the day, they started volunteering to fight for the jihad in Bosnia and organising the 'defence' of their own communities in Britain.

At around the same time, Arab Islamist exiles from Libya, Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere started turning up in London in large numbers. Many had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They had returned to their home countries from where, after instigating violent agitation, they were promptly thrown out. So these trained 'Afghan Arab' warriors made their way instead to Britain, attracted, they said, by its 'traditions of democracy and justice'. But they had now been trained to be killers. They had discovered jihad. And the radical ideology they brought with them found many echoes in the Islamism and seething resentments that, by now, were entrenched in British Muslim institutions.

You may find the debate in the comments section (at the bottom of the article), ahem, interesting.
Posted by: ryuge 2006-05-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=154070