The onus is on British government, and not on the Muslim community, writes Sukant Chandan from London Two years on from the 7 July 2005 attacks in London, the British state has failed to address the root causes of terrorist attacks in the West -- military aggression against the Arab and Islamic world. Instead of a recognition of the attacks on London and Glasgow as blowback from Britain's disastrous policies vis-à-vis Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, we are seeing a veritable trial by media against the Muslim community. It is demanded that the community answer for the actions of a few attackers, all the while the majority of Muslim organisations go further onto the defensive in the face of Islamophobic hysteria. With the exception of a few dissenting voices like Seamus Milne's in a Guardian article, the mainstream media in Britain would like to focus on anything except the elephant in the room that they are all ignoring: the decimation of Iraq by the occupation forces that is the source of radical Islamist rage against the West. The media would rather blame the British-Muslim community, accusing them of collective guilt for the ideology and actions of the attackers. This is having the inevitable effect of provoking an increase in attacks on Muslims or anyone who might look like one. Thus one can see a tragic pattern which follows every terrorist attack in Britain or against the West: the Muslim community is hounded by the media and political elite as the enemy within who share the evil ideology of Islam with the terrorists they are harbouring amongst them, and then there is an alarming rise in reported Islamophobic attacks. Particular incredulity has been focussed on the fact that the attackers were doctors or working in the National Health Service. The only person charged so far for the attacks is Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah arrested at Glasgow airport, and one of his former friends has been reported as saying that his possible motives are his opposition to the occupation of Iraq, the death of one of his close friends by an Iraqi death- squad, and his support of former Al-Qaeda strong-man in Iraq, Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi. These reports inadvertently highlight the glaringly obvious connections between the responsibility of Britain and the US for the developments in Iraq, and the extremist reactions that they have inspired. The media, however, has preferred to skirt the obvious connections, failing to investigate them and instead filling columns and TV reports with sensational stories of the "doctors plot" and reports that people are cancelling appointments with doctors with Muslim names. The argument circulating is that how can intelligent, professional, family-oriented people carry out actions that are usually the results of impressionable and alienated Muslim youth from poor communities blindly following a radical opportunist posing as a preacher? Clive Cookson in the Financial Times pointed out that it should come as no surprise that medical experts are involved in radical insurgencies. He points to examples from the communist Che Guevara, the Palestinian Marxist leader George Habash and the Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman El-Zawahiri, proving that Islamic radicals, like their secular counterparts, are often from educated, middle and upper class backgrounds. A study of 172 Al-Qaeda terrorists conducted four years ago by Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer in Pakistan, found that 90 per cent came from a relatively stable and secure background. Journalists and pundits have failed to see that, while it is no justification for the attacks, the individuals involved in the attacks by dint of their profession have a insight and greater exposure into the humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Iraq, and in light of this may possibly be more disturbed by it than most, leading perhaps to desperate and extreme action. A recent editorial in the New York Times demanded that the Bush administration conduct the swiftest possible withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The editorial argued that the occupation of Iraq is exacerbating the humanitarian and security situation in the region and beyond. Why is it that the leading US newspaper is more strident in addressing the root cause of the problem of the Middle East than its British counterparts are? Is it because the US has lost more than Britain in terms of its international standing and number of troops killed and injured in Iraq? If this is the case, the message is that Britain will have to suffer many more deaths of its soldiers and risk further attacks at home before it sees that the only solution to its security problem is withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the meantime in Britain, Muslim organisations and the Muslim community in general have been held responsible by the government and most of the mainstream media for not doing enough to expose individuals who might carry out attacks and eradicate the ideology that motivates them. Muslim organisations have been quick to distance themselves from these attacks in an unprecedented media campaign to re-assure the British public. This is understandable as they do not want the Muslim community in Britain to suffer any further, and there is perceptible relief that the attackers are not "homegrown" which would have given more ammunition for elements in the British state and media to turn the screws on the community. Their defensiveness however has the potential of backfiring. Some Muslims are already voicing their frustration of having to constantly emphasise their opposition to terrorist attacks and argue that only those who carry out attacks should be made to answer for their actions. If the concerted efforts of Muslim organisations in proving themselves a law-abiding community fail to affect government policy towards Muslims in Britain and in the Middle East, some sections of the Muslim youth may go further underground in pursuit of their grievances. The British government's present security proposals following the attacks can only alienate the Muslim community further. Prime Minister Gordan Brown is talking of introducing stricter vetting processes for Muslim and Arab medical staff coming to Britain for work, and is introducing a string of new anti-terror measures to parliament. These include the assumption of guilt if a suspect refuses to answer questions in post-charge interviews. The only difference from former premiere Tony Blair is that Brown is deciding to go on a less hasty and controversial course of action, and intends to create a cross-party consensus for his proposals. But what Brown lacks in bite, the media is making up for in its bark. There has been plenty of chatter in the media about encouraging the population to spy on the Muslim community. This is nothing new as the Muslim community has in recent years already been put under pressure to spy on itself, and last year the Department of Education asked universities to spy on Asian-looking students to counter Islamic radicalisation on campuses. The fact remains that all the security measures of the last seven years have not stopped attacks against Britain. In all truth the Muslim community is unlikely to do very much about extremist elements in its own ranks; the onus lies with the British government to do something about its responsibility for this mess. The Labour government likes to point to the Irish peace process as one of its greatest achievements of the last ten years. The British government seems to forget some of the parallels and lessons that this process holds for British policy towards Muslims at home and the Middle East. The Irish peace process showed the willingness of the British government to de- criminalise and negotiate with those it called terrorists in Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and promised in the Good Friday Agreement a timetable for withdrawal from its military occupation of Northern Ireland. It is leadership on these types of issues that is needed if a peace process is to be initiated between the British government, independence movements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and people -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- in Britain. The longer that this leadership is lacking, the more militants will interpret the lessons of the Irish peace process as meaning that the British government will only re-think its policies when Britain is brought to its knees by bombing its financial and political centres, as happened in the case of the 1974-1997 IRA campaign against the British mainland. Only in Scotland with the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party do we find anything close to the reasoned leadership that is so desperately required. The Scottish Assembly's first minister, SNP's Alex Salmond, has warned against knee jerk security reactions to the attacks, saying that there is nothing in the investigations into the attacks to suggest that the detention of terror suspects should be increased from 28 days to 90 days, as has been suggested by Blair and Brown. SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon has distanced herself from the criminalisation of the Muslim community that is emanating from England, and expressed fears that Scotland will be dragged into further problems as a result of policies from London. Muslim organisations in Scotland are appreciative of this type of leadership, and are able to operate more assertively as a result. On a political discussion show "Scotland after the bomb" one could see a general consensus around the defence of the Muslim community from criminalisation and calling for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, and the panelist and human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar said that a stealth bomber in Iraq is the moral equivalent of a suicide bomber in Scotland, to a round of applause and some gasps. On the street, anti-Muslim sentiment is rife in Scotland as the attacks on mosques and Muslim-owned shops have shown, but unlike in England where the anti-war movement is against and outside of the establishment, in Scotland the anti-war is part of the establishment as the three main parties in the governing coalition -- the SNP, Liberals, Democrats and Greens -- are all opposed to the occupation of Iraq. As a result the Scottish political response to the London-Glasgow attacks has been very different from that in England. While the British media seem obsessed by the rhetorical question of how highly qualified professional medical staff can be behind the attacks on London and Glasgow, a question that could equally be posed is how one of Europe's first democracies could have led an illegal war of aggression which has brought a once relatively developed Middle Eastern country into an abyss of destruction. So far the public debate is far removed from these issues and grossly skewed towards blaming Muslims and their ideology. The Muslim community, unlike the British government, is powerless to effectively address the underlying causes for terror attacks against Britain. What is needed from the government is some kind of recognition of, and practical action to undo, its failed policies in Iraq. This is the first step towards reversing the cycle of prejudice, war and violence which is unfolding. Unfortunately the present strategies of the British media and state will only accelerate this cycle of violence, in which the victims are innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Britain.
