Another May, another Mayor mercifully less prone than some to praising preachers of hate, and now, to add further icing to the cake of all who long for this country to return to the days when it was a tolerant, peaceful and civilised place in which to live, another moderate Muslim organisation to join the recently launched Quilliam Foundation in tackling the pockets of extremism and intolerance that remain among Britain’s Muslim community.
Last week’s launch of the organisation British Muslims for Secular Democracy is surely to be added to the list of good things to have happened lately. They may be signalling the beginning of a return to what now, in retrospect, seems to have been a golden era of community relations in Britain just a few decades ago. This was before books started being burnt and death threats against their authors issued in public that were allowed to go unpunished.
Yet, amidst all the recent cause for rejoicing, there is one small detail about last week’s launch of the BMSD that spoils our otherwise happy idyll.
The launch reportedly took the form of a debate on whether a secular state was the best option for Muslims. Arguing that it was, the BMSC’s chair and co-founder Yasmin Alibhai-Brown rightly condemned the present government for ‘pandering to Muslims by granting too many concessions, fuelling their separation from the rest of society.’
Many of us will certainly want to respond to this part of Ms Alibhai-Brown’s remarks by saying: ‘Amen to that, sister!’
However, the specific issue she picked on to illustrate the sort of favourable government treatment of Muslims to which she was taking exception gives some cause for concern. For the specific example of such pandering that she claimed ‘would only damage us in the long run’ was the government’s acquiescence to Muslim demands for separate faith schools.
The problem with her choice of example is that this is precisely an instance of Muslims seeking parity of treatment with other faith groups, rather than any especially favoured treatment.
Of course, there are many secularists and people of faith in Britain who argue against all state-funding of denominational schools. Perhaps, the BMSD will turn out to be among their number. If it does, they will be welcome to canvass for that particular point of view along with the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association.
However, their condemning the government for yielding to Muslim requests for denominational schools of their own without their equally condemning the government for supporting other sorts of denominational school seems duplicitous, if it is the elimination of all faith schools that is their true agenda.
Whether the state should withdraw its support from all denominational schools, of course, is a perfectly serious and proper issue for discussion, but it needs to be addressed head on to be tackled properly.
As far as I am concerned, a better illustration of the sort of deplorable pandering to Muslims that still goes on too often by public authorities is the failure of the police, especially, perhaps, London’s Metropolitan Police, to be even-handed in their designation of hate crimes.
Last Tuesday, the Hendon Times reported that, on the preceding Friday evening, two ultra-orthodox Jews had been stabbed streets apart in two separate incidents in Golders Green in what a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman reportedly described as having been ‘random and unprovoked attacks, but [that] were not being treated as faith hate crimes’.
Shortly following the stabbings, a resident of nearby Cricklewood, Mr Mohamed Jama Ahmed, was arrested and later charged with two counts of assault involving grievous bodily harm.
The recently elected new Mayor of London Boris Johnson has announced that he intends to make reduction of knife crime in the capital a priority. Newspapers reports at the week-end indicated that he is likely to call for the replacement of Sir Ian Blair as head of the Metropolitan Police should the number of such crimes in the capital not start to fall soon.
Until it does, perhaps secularists, whether they be Muslim or non-Muslim, who favour an end to state support for faith-schools might wish to consider that Jewish ones at least offer their pupils, not exactly noted for their predilection for carrying knives let alone committing violent offences, a more secure learning environment than community schools would where they would be obliged to rub shoulders with other Londoners not all of whom might yet have been won round to the BMSD’s otherwise enlightened and entirely laudable point of view.