This is a Muslim problem — and Muslims have to address it rather than abdicating their responsibilities

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We Muslims MUST stop blaming others for the way our young are radicalised, writes chairman of the Muslim Forum MANZOOR MOGHAL




As the lethal cycle of British involvement in jihadism deepens, so the cries of victimhood grow stronger.
The families of recruits to the Islamic State’s barbaric regime seem desperate to pin the blame for the crisis on anyone or anything — from supposed negligence by the police to brainwashing through the internet — rather than accept any real accountability.
Yesterday, the relatives of three sisters and their nine children from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who reportedly have travelled to Syria, complained bitterly that the British police had failed to prevent them joining the Islamic extremists.

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Three sisters and their nine children from Bradford have reportedly fled to Syria. The fathers' lawyer, Balaal Khan (left), said Ahktar Iqbal and Mohammed Shoaib had no idea that their wives planned not to return home



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Balaal Khan, who represents the husbands of these three Dawood sisters, wailed that families had been forced to do everything ‘off their own backs’ because there is ‘only one’ British police officer in Turkey dealing with the problem of Muslim recruitment to jihadism.
‘They need support, they need guidance from the police,’ said Khan.


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It echoes the moaning we heard earlier this year from the families of three East London schoolgirls — dubbed the ‘Jihadi Brides’ — who joined the Islamic State.
On that occasion, the parents and their lawyer took their complaints to Parliament, arguing that the Metropolitan Police had been ‘a disgrace’ in failing to give sufficient warnings of their daughters’ vulnerability to the zealots.
Of course, it must be extremely distressing for any parent to lose a child into the clutches of ISIS.
But I worry that all too often, we are told the same story by the families of those who run off to Syria: that it is always someone else’s fault.


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Protest
While trumpeting their own innocence over their children’s association with extremism, Muslim parents simultaneously protest that the authorities did nothing.
Well, if the families really had no knowledge of such activities, why should the police or schools or social services? And even when they admit to some knowledge of a link with radicalism, too many of them are inclined to play the victim, condemning western foreign policy or ‘Islamophobia’ or extremist online propaganda or a hostile media or Government inaction.

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Maryia Iqbal and Ismaeel Iqbal are among nine children feared to have been taken to Syria by their mother

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Ismaeel Iqbal (front, left) with sister Zaynab Iqbal, and Mariya Iqbal (right) before they went to the Middle East

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Zaynab Iqbal (right and left, with brother, Ismaeel) is understood to be among the children taken to Syria



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The former chairman of the Tory Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, was at it on the BBC yesterday in the wake of the latest jihadist scandal, saying that successive governments have ‘failed to engage with Muslims to tackle extremism’, a problem which she said was ‘incredibly worrying’.
But this search for scapegoats has to stop. The eagerness to pass the buck is not just wrong-headed and hypocritical, it also allows extremism to flourish.





Instead of endlessly pointing the finger at others, the Muslim communities should face up to their own responsibilities. For the fact is that in too many parts of Britain, they have allowed a backward-looking, insular, reactionary Islamic culture to develop, which has undermined social integration and promoted sectarianism.




This climate of division has been a fertile breeding ground for the recruiting sergeants of jihadism, because western liberal democracy has been wrongly presented as something poisonous, dangerous and un-Islamic.

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Mohammad Shoaib wept today as he appealed for his wife, Khadija Dawood, and children to get in touch with him. It is feared Ms Dawood, her two sisters and their nine children have fled to Syria to join ISIS

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Photos released yesterday show Ismaeel and Zaynab Iqbal cutting a cake with Mr Shoaib



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Indeed, there are many Muslim families here in Britain who, despite having potential access to the freedoms and prosperity of our advanced society, have chosen to cut themselves off deliberately for fear of contamination of their faith by the unbelievers.





That wilful separatism is reflected in a host of factors, such as the increasing prevalence of the full veil or burka in Muslim areas. Although it is often seen as a symbol of devotion, the burka actually has nothing to do with Islam, for the Koran merely requires that Muslim women dress modestly.


The burka is, in fact, just an oppressive import from Saudi Arabia, where there has long been a tradition of men taking multiple wives who are required to be covered up. So it owes its existence to institutionalised misogyny rather than religious piety.



Indeed, so many of the dress codes, rituals and abstentions that British fundamentalists hold to be integral to Islam, actually undermine the religion.




The primary duty of Muslims is to behave as upright citizens, conscious of the needs of others and determined to set an inspirational example of civic responsibility.


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Insularity




That is the exact opposite of what is achieved by all this dogmatic isolation driven by the self-appointed guardians of the faith. There is nothing Islamic about failing to teach Muslim children about painting and music, or preventing them from attending sports events, or refusing to instil in them respect for other faiths.




It is difficult, to say the least, for a young Muslim who is deprived of knowledge about British history, democratic values and even the English language to become a well-integrated member of society.



Tragically, the message of separatism is fuelled by a network of mosques and Islamic centres in Britain which preach a message of insularity dressed up as purity. Bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, many of them are in the grip of the ultra-conservative Wahhabism, an austere and harsh creed that took root in the Middle East in the 18th century and has been perverting true Islam ever since.

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If relatives' fears are correct, the group would be the largest family known to have gone to join ISIS



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In its aggressive puritanism and zealous fervour, Wahhabism is precisely the doctrine that gives Islam a bad name in modern Britain.





What is so disastrous is that this refusal to integrate with mainstream British society is leaving young Muslims in limbo. That is why they are so susceptible to the siren voices of extremism. Having been given no spirit of pride in Britain, no sense that they belong to a Westernised country, they are looking for a feeling of belonging.


Spoon-fed a diet of anti-Western propaganda and left disillusioned by the ‘decadence’ of British society, they yearn for an uncompromising alternative — and Islamism, even in the form of the blood-soaked savagery of the Islamic State, seems to provide the answer.
Indeed, for young men it is the brutal self-confidence of the Islamic State warriors — as portrayed in propaganda on social media — that is so appealing. Participation in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria seems to offer adventure, certainty, comradeship and self-righteous martyrdom, as well as the promise of jihadi brides and a sense of belonging.




In contrast to this savage machismo, the female British recruits are drawn to the cause because they believe, all too mistakenly, that jihadism offers them a life of security and purity, in contrast to the messy personal autonomy of Britain.
Moreover, in a twisted version of the excitable enthusiasm that so many western adolescents feel towards pop or sports stars, some young British Muslim women see the ISIS fighters as glamorous heroes, whose ruthlessness only enhances their attractiveness.


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Misguided
Meanwhile, for misguided mothers like the Dawood sisters, the ISIS drive for a caliphate seems to hold out the prospect of raising their children in a pure Muslim society, untainted by any western influences.



This is the kind of nonsense that other Muslims have to confront. It is no use always blaming the police or the Government or foreign policies.



Of course, we ultimately need a political solution to the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, one that involves dialogue and compromise rather than continual bloodshed.




But the existence of these warzones cannot explain the growing incidence of extremism within British Islam, prompting at least 700 Muslims from here to go out and fight in Syria and Iraq.



This week, the organisation Islamic Relief complained, in the typical mode of victimhood, that British Muslims were ‘being demonised again’ by the connection with jihadism.



‘Just 0.02 per cent of the British Muslim population go to join Middle Eastern conflicts,’ proclaimed Islamic Relief.



But that is just sophistry. This is a Muslim problem — and British Muslims have to address it rather than abdicating their responsibilities.


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