The London Blasts: Media Review

DAY TEN: Sunday 17 July 2005

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Part 3: Islam

WHAT MUSLIMS SAY

Severin Carrell reports the following exchange in the streets of Beeston last Thursday (in the pages of the Independent on Sunday, p. 12):

two friends in their thirties launched into an intense debate over whether the bombers were politically and morally justified to target London. As the men - whom we will call Khalid and Arif - argued beside an old ice-cream van, small groups of onlookers gazed at them with curiosity.

The increasingly furious political and theological debate exposes the turmoil many young Muslims now feel after Thursday's attacks.

His hands stabbing the air for emphasis, Khalid was emphatic. "The simple thing is: if they hadn't gone into Iraq, none of this would have happened," he said. "They've gone into Iraq as a business, to make money. You speak to any of the boys around here: it preys on your mind, it breeds frustration, and it breeds anger."

His well-built friend, Arif, gently retorted: "It doesn't breed anything - that's the wrong word. Two wrongs just don't make a right."

Khalid's claims alarmed Arif. Like most of Beeston's Muslim residents, he doesn't accept that Iraq is a justification for violent revenge. They all search for a "guiding hand", the indoctrinator who beguiled the bombers into killing London commuters. News of an Egyptian link or the role of an outsider, the Jamaican convert Germaine Lindsay, are seized on. " There was a bigger player behind them," he insists.

"No, our kid. No," said Khalid, his pale Kashmiri face colouring. "There was nobody stood behind them, brainwashing them. There's people stood behind them telling them what the truth is. God allowed this to happen, that's what I believe. Islam says to me I have a duty to help any Muslim who is in need."

But that's wrong, replied Arif. "It's not any Muslim. It's any human - that's what the Koran says." Judging by the nods of onlookers, he won that point. Arif seemed to win most points. Few seem persuaded by Khalid's angry rhetoric.

Khalid came back at him, arguing "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". And, he claimed, the Koran's requirement for a Muslim to openly declare war on an enemy has already been met by the Islamist terrorists - the people known among Muslims as "jihadis". "They've given a warning - a notice of war. If you come and kill our innocents, we will kill yours."

Arif, briefly silenced by this, tried to calm his friend down. He replied: "But I would be killing innocent Muslims. That's against Islam. This was my friend of 18 years. What happens in Iraq, it doesn't give him the right. You're in anger. I'm in sorrow."

David Leppard and Jonathan Calvert visit Beeston in Leeds for the Sunday Times, and hear the views of some of the bombers' Muslim neighbours:

'The young Asian men — few young Asian women are found on the street — seem as interested in affairs in the Middle East as in their local neighbourhood.'

'One young man said that it “hurt” to “see our brothers being killed” in the Middle East. Pav Khan, 20, who knew one of the suicide bombers, said by way of explanation: “If he did it, look at what’s happening in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.” '

'Although he and others condemned the London bombings, they shared an undercurrent of resentment at American and British military action in the Middle East.'

' “It’s all about the stance of Tony Blair and British policies,” said Mohammed, a twentysomething ambling along the street who said that he had known Khan. “You’ve seen innocent citizens dying [in the London bombs], but then innocent citizens died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and even Algeria.' (page 11)

In the Observer's special report on the bombings, journalists visit Beeston mosque (which had banned the men who carried out the bombings):

British Muslims - The Generation Gap

Following the perceptive comments noted in yesterday's Media Review on this topic, Severin Carrell of the Independent on Sunday also records these thoughts from 'Arif' and North Leeds community worker Mohammed Shafique:

'It is here, say Arif and Shaf, that many parents fail to give younger Muslims the freedom to openly express themselves or to take active political and religious roles in their communities. It is here where parallel lives become secret lives; where parents, friends and imams lose control and influence. This, in part, is why young men such as Hasib Mir Hussain or Shahzad Tanweer feel an explosive sense of anger.'

On Friday Johann Hari offered his own way to 'beat the bombers' in the Independent (paid for access here) in a piece entitled 'The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women'. The logic of Arif and 'Shaf's' analysis, however, is that one way to help defuse the rage of the jihadists might be a rebellion of children against their parents in these South Asian cultures, leading to the reform or overthrow of stifling patriarchy, and the full expression of young Muslims' political and religious lives.

In the absence of larger policy changes, however, it is unclear what impact this would have.

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