Since the attempted attacks in London and Glasgow last week, representatives of many of the country’s largest Muslim organisations have called on British Muslims to help the police catch the perpetrators.
Even the Muslim Council of Britain – formerly reviled for its refusal to unambiguously denounce terrorism – has added its voice to the growing chorus.
“Let us be absolutely clear about this: those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of all of us. There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity,” an MCB statement said on Tuesday.
“It is our Islamic duty not only to utterly and totally condemn such evil actions, but to provide all the necessary support to prevent such atrocities from taking place.”
Since then journalists and commentators have hailed the new-found willingness of such Islamist groups to co-operate with the police.
Writing in the Guardian, journalist Hugh Muir hailed the MCB’s statement as “a significant shift in policy”.
Elsewhere in the Guardian, Sarfraz Mansoor, applauded the MCB’s statement as evidence of “some encouraging signs of sanity”.
Mansoor then offered his own recipe for defeating Islamic extremism by calling on Muslim scholars to rescue Islam from extremists.
Meanwhile Asim Siddiqui, founder of the City Circle – a networking association for well-heeled Muslim professionals – offered his own proscription, writing that “what is required is for those that claim to represent and have influence among young British Muslims to proactively counter the extremist Islamist narrative.”
Fine words indeed.
But it would be vastly preferable if such groups and individuals devoted less time to seeking to reassure Guardian readers of their good intentions and instead invested their time and energies in reaching out to the inhabitants of the UK's growing Muslim ghettos.
If they do not, their fine words and opinion pieces risk appearing like little more than empty propaganda designed to lull the British people back into their false sense of security.
The MCB's statement - "those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of all of us" - is open to interpretation. Some streams of Islamic thought appear to believe that no non-Muslims are innocent. Several interviews with Islamic apologists have allowed them this same get-out clause. The MCB should be asked to remove the ambiguity.
I too welcome the MCB's "change of Heart" especially as they choose to attack the undercover journalist who exposed the extreamism in Britian's Mosques in the channel 4 programme "Mosque". At the time of airing I emailed the MCB and registered my disapointment at their actions but they didn't reply. Nor did the London Central Mosque when I asked them to explain how the country's flag could be burnt openly in its grounds.
I also hope that the Government looks at the background's of the people involved in this latest attack and draw the same conclusions as many of us; this being the central role that Saudi Arabia's state religion (the branch of Islam) played. I can not for the life of me (except that it has to do with oil and trade) see how no one in power can see what is coming from that particular country.
Steed