The West's
anti-Muslim Campaign
By Dr. Shireen M. Mazari
Since the Danish cartoon
issue, a pattern seems to be emerging from the US
and Europe where there appears to be a concerted
two-pronged effort to harass and discriminate against
Europe's Muslim population and undermine assertive/strong
Muslim states.
One cannot simply label it a coincidence that even
as British politicians began abusing the veiled
Muslim women, a Danish outfit chose to show a film
on the blasphemous cartoons and so-called analysts
in the US and the UK began to launch a new campaign
against the state of Pakistan, while the French
lower house of Parliament seemed to embark on a
new path of rewriting the history of Muslim states,
beginning with Turkey. Perhaps one is being too
much of a conspiracy theorist, but if we examine
the manner in which the US built up a campaign based
on either outright lies before the international
community at the UN, or misstatement of facts and
rather flimsy evidence to finally launch its invasion
of Iraq, we in the Muslim World would do well to
see patterns of intent appearing well in time.
In this two-part article,
first the attack against Muslims within their own
European countries is examined. Let us take the
issue of the veil, which I personally have no affinity
with, but should that give me the right to impose
my perspective on other women and how they should
dress? After all, European Muslim women have been
wearing it for decades, so why should Jack Straw
bring up the issue now? Could it be that the European
states have now decided to assert a white, Christian
ethos of Europe and deny its multiculturalism where
the social traditions and culture of the Muslims
is an integral part of the new European identity?
It would seem to be the case because the Dutch Parliament
has voted to ban the wearing of the burqa and three
Flemish cities in Belgium have already instituted
such a ban. Of course they ran into some problems
because they did not want to make it a crime to
wear carnival masks.
But then continental
Europe has become overtly anti-Islam since 9/11
and there are cities like Rotterdam where designs
to build mosques have been rejected because they
are "too Islamic". Has anyone in Muslim
Pakistan objected to the building of a church because
its design was "too Christian"? Imagine
the abuse we would have had to take from the West
if we had been stupid enough to do such a thing,
but it seems the Europeans can do what they like
in terms of abusing Islam -- it is all acceptable
under the guise either of "freedom of expression"
or assimilation into the European culture.
Even more absurd,
the Europeans are now deciding on an acceptable
dress code for their Muslim citizens and the logic
of this can eventually lead to a forced exodus of
European Muslims to their ancestral lands -- so
that the white, Christian identity of Europe is
restored. Of course that is the hope but it may
be more difficult to achieve and what might happen
instead is the increasing polarization within European
societies, which would create more violence and
radicalism especially amongst the marginalized members
of this society.
Britain, of course,
has gone even further in beginning a campaign against
Muslim women wearing the veil. It was not too long
ago when Jack Straw was seeking re-election and
came to Pakistan to visit the homeland of a bulk
of his constituents in order to win their vote.
He even broke bread with them in their tradition
–- all because of their vote. Throughout his
visit one never heard him say anything about the
discomfiture he felt when faced with veiled women.
Worse still, the British
media has gleefully jumped on the bandwagon, least
concerned about their distortion of facts in the
process. Take the case of the British Muslim teaching
assistant who is being penalized because she refuses
to take off her veil in front of her male colleagues.
It is being given out that she has been penalized
for wearing the veil while trying to teach young
children which debilitates the learning process.
Yet this is a blatant lie because the girl, Aishah
Azmi, stated on BBC radio that she had agreed to
remove the veil in class and only sought to wear
it in front of her male colleagues. But who will
listen to her in the present climate of intolerance
in Britain?
With Blair joining in the tirade against the veil,
it is hardly surprising that attacks against mosques
and imams have become rampant, with the latest incident
taking place in Glasgow where a Bangladeshi imam
was attacked following an attack against a mosque
a week earlier. All a coincidence or can we see
a pattern emerging, which targets Muslims and seeks
to compel them to "Christianise them"
socially and culturally?
Otherwise, why can't Straw and Blair seek to force
the white Brits into becoming more modest in their
dress so as not to offend the British Muslims whose
culture is now part of what makes up the British
identity? If the veil is to be banned, perhaps the
mini-skirt or bikinis should also suffer the same
fate since they give offence to British Muslims.
Nor is one making too much of the veil controversy
because we need to see it in the wider context of
the British government's efforts to get Muslim parents
to spy on their school-going children and now the
UK education department is proposing to have lecturers
in universities spy on Muslim students. This reminds
one of the Nazis making Germans spy on Jews.
As for the resurgence of the Danish cartoons amidst
all these other developments, what can one say about
this new reflection of fascism except that the Jews
have been replaced by the Muslims and that eventually
the Muslims of Europe need to organize and fight
back before they land up in the twenty-first century
equivalent of concentration camps and a new holocaust
begins. Within this new oppressive European environment,
the demonisation of strong Muslim states is a natural
outcome. Coincidentally, two of the targeted states,
Pakistan and Turkey, also happen to be the countries
of origin of a large amount of the ancestors of
the present European Muslims.
Both Turkey and Pakistan are also strong nationalist
states, sensitive to the defense of their sovereignty.
Of course, they are being attacked in different
ways, but a deliberate targeting is now becoming
only too apparent. What used to be more covert --
especially in the case of Turkey -- is now becoming
more overt and the move by the French lower house
of parliament to declare it a crime to deny the
genocide of the Armenians by the Ottomans is a reflection
of this. France has been the most vehement opponent
of Turkey's entry into the EU because that would
bring in a sizeable Muslim population into Europe
-- something Europe still cannot live with. But
this move is just one in a series of negative EU
moves against Turkey. After all, the admission of
Greek Cyprus into the EU when the conflict there
had not been resolved was a major political move
against Turkey. Ironically, Turkey's vociferous
commitment to secularism has done nothing to dilute
its perception in Europe as a Muslim state. The
West wants to redraw Muslim states' borders, rewrite
Muslim history and tell its Muslim citizens how
to dress.
Next week: The campaign
against Pakistan
(The writer
is director general of the Institute of Strategic
Studies in Islamabad. Courtesy The News)
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