View from abroad: Tony Blair’s anti-Islamist jihad

Politicians are born with thick skins; for them, shame is an alien concept. But Tony Blair has pushed shamelessness to a new level. Despite the fact that several opinion polls show that a third of all Britons consider him a war criminal, he never ceases to inflict his neocon views on us. His latest sally into the public arena was a recent speech at Bloomberg in London. There, he held forth on the West’s need to make an alliance with Russia and China to confront the threat from militant Islam. According to Blair, this was the biggest danger to world peace, but the West had chosen to close its eyes to this reality. He pressed Western governments to take sides in the ongoing struggle in the Middle East between ‘radical Islam’ and the side that wanted to engage with the world, and stood for ‘modernity’. Specifically, he advocated support for the military government in Egypt against its opponents in the Muslim Brotherhood. So much for Blair’s democratic credentials. And while he hinted that much of the ideology that sustained radicalism came from Saudi Arabia, he shied away from naming the source of the poison. Basically, then, his speech was a plea to reactivate Bush’s unending ‘war on terror’. But if the last decade and more has taught us anything, it is that there is no monolithic Islamic army on the march. Different groups have their own agendas, and need to be tackled politically as well as militarily. But above all, there have to be local solutions, not those imposed by Washington and London. To be sure, groups such as Al Qaeda and their affiliates have global goals, but again, a counter-narrative needs to be developed to neutralise its allure for young Muslims. Clearly, Blair, with so much blood on his hands, is hardly the man to inspire this process. He was duly castigated across the political spectrum for his bizarre views. As I wrote here last week, another current concern in Britain is the movement of young British Muslims to Syria where a 16-year-old Briton was killed a few days ago. The police have appealed to Muslim women to alert them if their sons, brothers or husbands show any sign of being motivated to join the anti-Assad campaign. Given the distrust the police are viewed with among much of the Muslim community, it is hard to see women reporting male family members to the police. Already, the Muslim community in the UK feels it is under constant and unfair scrutiny by the authorities and the media. Now, according to a spokesman for the Muslim Council, women are being asked to spy on the men in their families. Clearly, this initiative — apparently intended to stop Muslim volunteers from putting themselves in harm’s way in Syria — is doomed to failure. The reality, of course, is that the police fear that some of the returning volunteers will take up arms against the British state. Yet another focus of media attention involving a Muslim community relates to the curious alleged Islamist plot to seize control of 25 state schools in Birmingham. This is based on an anonymous letter that sets out the goal of ensuring that only Islamic values are taught at these institutions. There have been allegations that secular teachers have either been hounded out or marginalised; that boys and girls have been made to sit separately; and sex-education is not imparted. Now the education secretary, Michael Gove, has sent in inspectors to investigate, and has appointed Peter Clarke, the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, to look into possible terror links. This move has been roundly condemned by the local police chief as he thinks the appointment sends out a wrong signal to Birmingham Muslims. Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian : “Locals insist the reality is that Muslims, both liberal and conservative, have been getting more involved in their children’s schools to raise standards, not ‘Islamise’ them. But the result of the uproar has been to poison community relations and deter ordinary Muslims from taking part in civic life for fear of being branded ‘extremist’.” Milne also points out to the contradiction inherent in the policy of supporting and arming the anti-Assad groups in Syria while simultaneously arresting Muslim volunteers who return from that tormented country: “Muslims from Britain who volunteer to fight or send funds to Syria, in effective alliance with their government, are arrested and charged with terrorism offences in Britain. Britons who fought in Libya, on the other hand, were allowed to come and go as they pleased. “It is beyond hypocritical and cynical, but part of a pattern of manipulation, support for tyranny and military intervention in the Middle East over a century. That record has been central to the rise of Islamist movements and the jihadist backlash since 2001…” The reality is that it is not the West, but Muslim countries, who are suffering most from Islamic extremism. And while Western countries have enacted harsh new anti-terror laws and recruited and trained counter-terrorism forces, the Islamic world has remained vulnerable to this threat. Above all, we in Pakistan need no lessons from Blair about the dangers of radical Islamist groups.