We ignore Islam issue at our peril (From The Northern Echo)

We ignore Islam issue at our peril

11:52am Tuesday 9th March 2010 in

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IWONDER if we are all going to die of political correctness? Even as I begin to write this piece, I suspect that – though guarded and diplomatic as I might try to be – I shall nevertheless be accused of some thought crime, hate crime or Islamophobia.

I take as my text, so to speak, some words of Osama bin Laden: “We shall not need to wage war to win Europe: they have not the stomach for a fight.” Recent reports make me think he is right. Just a few indicators, then, from a number of recent news items.

First, what are we to make of the fact – not the opinion or the loose accusation, but the fact – that Sir Ian Blair, when he was head of the Metropolitan Police, signed a formal agreement with an Islamic radical recognising him as the “principal” representative of the Muslim community? This man, Azad Ali, was trusted by the Met as a go-between linking the police with the local Muslim population.

They also agreed to give Mr Ali information about upcoming anti-terror raids. But Mr Ali is accused of justifying the killing of our troops in Iraq.

When Mr Ali signed this agreement, he was chairman of The Muslim Safety Forum, which is linked to the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). Jim Fitzpatrick, a Labour minister, has accused the IFE of infiltrating the Labour Party as the Militant Tendency did 30 years ago. Meanwhile, Mr Ali has been suspended from his civil service job for singing the praises of Abdullah Azzam – bin Laden’s most influential teacher.

It is worth quoting the IFE directly to find out what aims its members are committed to.

They say: “We aim to change the very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed from ignorance to Islam.” There could not be a clearer manifesto for an Islamist revolution.

At this point, and in an attempt to escape the accusation of Islamophobia, I state again my repeated belief that not all Muslims share these extreme views and that most are loyal and peace-loving British subjects.

However, that is not the point: it does not take many committed extremists to plunge a society into violent revolution. Both the Bolshevik and Nazi takeovers began among a very small number of extreme activists.

Writing in a national newspaper, Andrew Gilligan tells how reporters for Channel Four’s Dispatches programme had investigated the hardline East London mosque where they uncovered these revolutionary intentions. Gilligan says there are many who know the truth about the IFE’s ambitions, but fear speaking out for fear of reprisals.

The Dispatches team tried to evade the accusation of Islamophobia by ensuring that 70 per cent of all their interviewers were Muslims.

And, of course, the overwhelming majority of East End Muslims have no truck with the policies and aims of the IFE.

I don’t know if bin Laden is correct when he says we have no stomach for a fight. I hope it does not come to a fight. But I do know that these scary issues, accusations, denials and counter-accusations are in the public realm and, as such, must be discussed openly with the view not to planting the blame on any individual or group, but with the sole and most urgent intention of discovering the truth.

If truth is to be overruled by accusations of Islamophobia, then we shall indeed die of political correctness – and it will be death by our own hands.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.