UK Shuns Main Muslim Bodies: MCB Leader

LONDON — The Blair government is marginalizing the major Muslim organizations in Britain for the sake of unrepresentative bodies and individuals and its domestic and foreign policies risk radicalize more Muslims, which harms the British social harmony and peace, said the Secretary General of the Muslim umbrella group in Britain.

"The government is marginalizing major Muslim organizations, including the MCB, and it seems that new organizations are being brought up in the house of parliament where they don’t have any base," Muhammad Abdul Bari told IslamOnline.net in an exclusive interview.
"It is a perception in the community that they [the government] are trying to divide the community along sectarian lines that is the perception I have heard in different places."


He said the government is now reaching out to obscure Islamic organizations and shunning the representative one.

"So the government now is talking to something called Sufi Muslim Council founded a month ago," Abdul Bari said.

The MCB leader, a specialist teacher in behavior support, added that the newly established Commission for Integration and Cohesion included unknown Muslim faces.

"Not a single Muslim rep was taken from any of the national Muslim organizations," he said, noting that the Hindu representative is the secretary general of the Hindu Forum UK.

Abdul Bari, a father of four, was picked in June from among 37 candidates at the MCB annual general meeting to replace outgoing Sir Iqbal Sacranie.

He was elected in a secret ballot of more than 250 delegates representing the major MCB national and regional bodies.

The MCB, a coalition of some 400 organizations, is the largest Muslim umbrella group in Britain, home to 1.8 million Muslims.

Hushing Critics

The MCB leader, who has a PhD and a PGCE from King's College London and a management degree from the Open University, said it seems that the government wants to talk to people who "simply listen to them and who do not criticize."

"The perception is given that we are offensive when we criticize the government, it is blackmail, and when others criticize it is ok," he complained.

Abdul Bari, who has a Bangladeshi origin, said the government did not accept the latest Muslim criticism of its stance on the Israeli war on Lebanon.

"We made this point when Lebanon was invaded by Israel and our prime minister simply followed Bush's line," he recalled.

"We made noise, some MPs and major Muslim organizations sent an advertisement and we were told we were trying to blackmail the government."

In August, an open Muslim letter blaming British foreign policy for giving "ammunitions" to terrorists has been criticized by the government and senior politicians.

Demonizing

The MCB leader criticized double standards in dealing with the ugly phenomenon of terror.

"When the Irish situation was prevailing in this country, the government and the security agencies targeted the people who were creating crime in the society, the catholic community was not targeted as a bad community," he said.

"Unfortunately, we have some bad apples and because of them the whole community is demonized."

Abdul Bari slammed anti-terror measures, including house raids and racial profiling, applied in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist attacks.

"It is not helping at all," he stressed, asserting that there are better ways to deal with any issue over a Muslim school or mosque than raiding them.

He cited last week's raid on an Islamic school that is a charitable organization.

"If I was a police officer what I would have done is to ask the charity commission what exactly is happening there and probably go to the school directly and talk to the management and the head teacher and see what is going on. And if they hide something then there is a room for investigation in other things.

"But nothing we don’t know about and suddenly a school is vilified in the pretext that someone called Abu Hamza [Al-Masri] went there a few times and had some meetings."

The MCB leader offered a recipe.

"If there is intelligence about certain people, they can be taken to court and tried. Nobody disagrees about that. But for a few people, the whole community must not be demonized."

Far-Right Media

The British Muslim leader cited a correlation between the government policies and demonizing the minority by far-right media.

"So when a government behaves the way it has been behaving and media portrays Muslims in a very negative way, it gives us a scenario that this community is not accepted fully, and then it does not help community relationships," he said.

Abdul Bari said the media portrayal that Islam by nature can not fit into multicultural society is totally wrong.

"This is the perception being given by the far right media and mainly sections of politicians," he noted.

Such portrayals, the MCB leader cautioned, are leaving the impression that Islam is the enemy now as was Communism during the cold war.

He said right-wing media are making too much fuss about extremism among Muslims and tend to give much weight to "big mouths" and portray them as the representatives of British Muslims when in fact they are a minority.

"It [extremism] is a thing that exists within every community unfortunately," Abdul Bari admitted.

"In our community it is now exposed in the manner that no other community has been exposed like that but the number is a tiny minority.

"In the past few years, we saw certain people who had big mouth and the media used to pick them up, people like Abu Hamza," noted the MCB leader.

Two-Way Process

Abdul Bari also said that integration is a "two-way process" and the government has a greater role to play.

"The overwhelming part of the Muslim community wants to live in peace. They want to integrate positively socially, economically and politically."

He criticized government officials for repeatedly criticizing the Muslim minority as not doing enough to better integrate into society.

"The present government is simply trying to blame the Muslim community and its leaders that we are not doing enough. Nobody is doing enough in fact. We should do more, the government should do more and at the end of the day, it is a collective national process. We have to work together," Abdul Bari said.

He stressed that Muslims should not be squarely blamed for the ghetto mentality.

"There has been self segregation in places such as Bradford and other places but it is not only the fault of the Muslim community. Why have people moved away from Muslim areas and certain cities so it is a two way process."

The MCB leader said British Muslims are still facing daunting domestic challenges.

"It is education, housing, employment and health issues that are haunting sections of the Muslim communities; some are more affected than others.

"Unemployment is more than three times the national average," he added.

A government-backed study, conducted by university researchers in Birmingham, Derby, Oxford and Warwick, showed in July that 14% of Muslims aged over 25 were unemployed, compared with the national unemployment rate of 4%.

Commissioned to review the prospects of faith communities in England, it also found Muslims had poorer levels of education and were more vulnerable to long-term illness.

Click to listen to the interview