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In the Eye of the Storm

By Tariq Mehmood 

07/28/05 "ICH" -- -- The mother of democracy as Britain prided itself once, even when it held hundreds of millions in colonial bondage is no more, we are told. Britain has changed since the outrages of 7th July. Hardly had the bombs gone off in London, when Tony Blair had declared them to be the work of Islamic terrorists.. Where as previously the media and the politicians used terms like ‘extremists’, ‘Islamic terrorists and ‘fundamentalists.’ Now it is ‘Islamists.’ Any one with a Muslim background or who, like the Brazilian, ‘looks’ like a Muslim is fair game for the new police death squads. Over the past few days, surveys have shown that two thirds of British Muslims have considered moving out of the country.

Welcome to this civilised country where those whose visa might have run out, like the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menzes, are shot dead in the back, eight times. The police and politicians including Blair state that this is only the beginning, and that there will be more shootings. The officer responsible for pumping bullets into the back of an innocent man has been rewarded with a free family holiday. Sir Ian Blair commissioner of police said that over the past few weeks there had been 250 cases which could have ended up like that of the hapless Brazilian electrician. There were seven occasions when the police almost opened fire. British minorities, especially Muslims and in particular young men, are now faced with police death squads, who shoot first and then ask questions. 

Racist hysteria

The racist hysteria has resulted in 86% of the population supporting the shoot to kill policy. Fascist organisations, like the British National Party and marauding gangs of racists buoyed on by Tony Blair’s speeches, whose anti Muslim venom is only just hidden in words carefully crafted by his army of spin doctors, have unleashed a wave of violence that has already resulted in at least one recorded death, that of Kamal Raza Butt, who came as a visitor this country only to end up battered to death in Nottingham. Around 1000 racially motivated incidents have been recorded since 7th July. There has been a 500% increase in these attacks . Gurdwaras as well as mosques have been set alight. Muslim women wearing Hijab have been refused onto buses. An Arab woman, whose brother treated many of the London bomb victims, was attacked for singing in Arabic whilst pushing her baby in a pram. Underground carriages have emptied when Asian’s or ‘Muslim looking’ men have got on. But the most alarming aspect of the racist backlash is how the British government is using the attack on London to further erode civil liberties in this country. New anti-Muslim police squads are being formed. These will be led by the Special Branch, a political police force and will be fully supported by the numerous self appointed ‘Muslim leaders’ in this country. 

Now a new hunt is on the way, for a new wave of ‘failed suicide bombers’, they include children of Asylum seekers. When seen against the backdrop of an already existing racist anti-asylum seeker campaign, one wonders what could be the next spicy touch, by an establishment not averse to sexing up doggy dossiers.

A ‘free’ press

Following the bombings of July 7th the police quickly ‘identified’ some Pakistani and a Caribbean youth as ‘suicide bombers’. In the frenzy of police, politicians and media statements after the incident it is a done and dusted acceptance that this must be true. The media across the world, including in Pakistan have accepted the line that these ‘Muslim extremists’ must be the perpetrators of the London outrages. Yet the British police and particularly politicians are not averse to coming out with the most outrageous of lies to further their own political objectives. These were the same people who brought the world the weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair even produced an intelligence dossier, and argued that the threat from Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction was real and imminent and Britain could be attacked within 45 minutes. The world was shown at the United Nations diagrams of where these weapons of mass destruction factories were. Tony Blair and his cohorts knew all along that this was a lie. These lies were told to manipulate the British public and justify the unlawful aggression against Iraq, a country which has never harmed Britain.

Following the Birmingham pub bombings of the 1970s the police and the media claimed to have found the culprits. Six innocent Irish men were arrested and sent to jail in a frenzy of anti-Irish sentiment. They wrongly spent the best part of their life in prison. The police lied. The media and the politicians colluded in this. Had it not been for the selfless efforts of campaigners, this injustice would have continued. In today’s Britain, Campaigners for the Birmingham 6 or Guilford Four (another group of Irish people who were wrongly convicted) could go to jail in this most civilised of countries. 
In the British press images of four youth carrying rucksacks getting on a train, have been circulated and but we have had the passport of Hasib Hussain, who is claimed to be one of the London bombers, flashed across the media. According to the BBC Online, this was in fact a young boy who is living in High Wycombe, a small town outside London. "I first saw my photograph on Channel 4 [news] and I was terrified," the boy told ARY. "I didn't want people looking at me saying, hey, you are supposed to be dead, or someone saying that there goes the London bomber." Major British papers have run headlines like ‘Britain named as bomb planner.’ Daily Mail, 21/07/05 According to this newspaper, the police in Pakistan arrested British born Haroon Rashid Aswad in a madrassa, carrying a suicide belt and £13,000 in cash. The paper also claimed that he had had 20 conversations with one of the alleged London bombers. According to BBC news however, Pakistan has denied arresting anyone in connection with the London bombs. This never made the headlines. Such is the media concern for accuracy in this very civilised of countries.
If you sow the wind – you harvest the storm

Since the barbaric attacks in London of 7th July 2005, in which 57 people died and over 700 were injured, senior British politicians like Tony Blair, Jack Straw and John Reed have been jumping over backwards shouting that none of this has anything to do with what we have done in Iraq or Afghanistan. In spite of this 64% of the British people according to the Guardian, link the acts in London to the British actions in Iraq. For three years Tony Blair and his government have warned people in this country that they have to pay a ‘blood price’ for the actions of the British government in Iraq and now they are cock a hoop in denial. At a recent meeting in the midlands, an Iraqi speaker, whilst condemning the deaths in London pointed out that if you sow the wind you will reap the storm. 

The attacks on London were not theological actions, but political ones. Neither were they aimed at non-Muslims. Indeed Muslims were among the dead. Including people like 24 year old Ateeqee Sharifi who came to Britain seeking refuge from Afghanistan, where his parents were killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The occupation of Iraq is a political act and not a theological one. Iraq would not have been occupied if it produced only carrots. Iraq is occupied and its people brutalised because the Anglo-American imperialists want control over half the world’s oil. Ask the Iraqis of the good nature they have seen of Britain and America. 12 years of sanctions, in which over 500,000 children died. The first day of the bombing of Iraq that led to the current occupation resulted in over 8000 civilian deaths, and since the occupation over 100,000 people have died as a direct consequence of the actions of Tony Blair’s Labour party and government. 

We all lost life

Tony Blair has created an ‘Us and Them’ situation in this country - ‘Us’ being white people and ‘Them’ being ‘Us’ from the rest of the world. But he is doing this through a clear targeting of Islam. Any questioning of his foreign policy he condemns outright. He told a labour party meeting on 16th July, 'It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world …It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to.' 

The British media has been ramming home the linkage between Islam and terrorism and Terrorist and Muslims. This has been justified by a whole host of self appointed ‘Muslim leaders’ who have been popping up on the television screens and in newspapers apologising on behalf of Muslims for the carnage of London. Luton mosque organised an ‘Islam against terrorism’ conference, other Muslim groups are planning marches and resolutions along the lines of ‘Muslims against terrorism’ or ‘Not in Our Name.’ All of these are implicitly accepting the linkage of Islam as well as Muslims with terrorism, that there are ‘good true’ Muslims and ‘bad Muslims, who are not real Muslims.’ This is feeding directly into the racism of British society and the political agenda of the Labour government.

The apologies of these Muslim ‘leaders’ for what happened in London is like bowing in front of a devil because of the actions of a demon. Barbarism has bread barbarism. Muslims should not apologise as Muslims for what has happened on the streets of London. Religion does not determine any community's humanity. Any apology implies an acceptance of Blair's dictum – ‘them and us’. It means, ‘we’ are sorry for the loss of ‘your’ life - when we all lost life.

The linkage of Islam to terrorism by Tony Blair, and its implicit acceptance by Muslim ‘leaders’ is as ridiculous as trying to understand what produces people like Hitler, Tony Blair and George Bush by studying the Bible or other Christian literature. Christianity is about as responsible for the production of these racists and war mongers as Islam is for what happened in London. 
If anything Muslims in this country should be proud of the fact that in their hundreds of thousands they joined million of others and marched to appose the terrorism of Bush and Blair. And lest we forget, if we put all those who died at the hands of those who have been called terrorists by the Anglo-American governments over the last hundred years, they could not match the 3 million deaths caused by the Americans in Vietnam alone.

Should we integrate into a British way of life?

Whilst Tony Blair and the labour government tries to direct attention away from the linkage between Iraq and London, all of us who live and work in this country and pay taxes are implicated in the horror unleashed upon the Iraqi people by Britain and the US. Our taxes are being used to pay for the death and destruction that has been pushed on Iraq. Muslims like everyone else in this country, whether they like it or not are directly implicated in the daily carnage of Iraq. When we are asked to integrate into Britain now, in 2005, we surely have a right to ask into which Britain. If it is the Britain of the racists and war mongers as represented by Tony Blair and the Labour Party, then millions upon millions of people, Muslims and non Muslims have rejected that vociferously. 

Lessons from the past

There is much in the racist backlash to the London bombs that has echoes to what happened decades ago in the country. 

During the 1970s and 1980s Britain was faced with a wave of racist violence. This included racist ‘Paki’ bashing gangs often of drunken white youth for whom ‘Paki’ did not mean Pakistani, but any Asian. Many people were murdered, including taxi drivers, students and restaurant workers. Mosques, Gurdwaras and temples were attacked. Fascist organisations like the National Front, often protected by thousands of police officers tried to march through Asian areas. Asian youth of that period began to organise, and fought back against the racists. In this process they came into conflict with the police. I was among the many hundreds of youth who organised. I learnt that the reason I was in England was because of a colonial history. That the reason we were poor was not due to religion. That the poverty of my family was born out of the fact that we had been robbed over hundreds of years by British colonialism. That we were here, in the UK, because they were there, in the countries of our origin. We had to learn many lessons not least that we were Asians only in the West. There were no Asian’s in Asia, only people belonging to different nations and countries. The media then, following the lines thrown down by the politicians blamed angry young men, for fermenting trouble in the community, and blamed Asian generally for not ‘integrating’ into the British way of life. During the 1970’s and 1980’s a whole host of self appointed community leaders, many of whom gave unintelligible statements on behalf of the ‘community’, condemned the extremists particularly amongst the youth. The issue in the 1970s and 80s was not of integration and it is not one today. Notwithstanding the garbled apologies of the ‘community leaders’, youth of the 1970s and 1980s pointed out that the issue was racism. We pointed out that ‘integration’ implied there was something inherently wrong with us. When the problem is with the deep rooted racism of British society.

Civil Liberties

Whilst the current wave of racist hysteria and paranoia is set against the background of invasion and occupation of Iraq, the British police have been killing people with impunity in custody since 1969. Since then over 1000 people have been killed in police custody, some of these have been found by juries to have been unlawfully killed. No police officer has ever been convicted for any death in custody. This was before the official sanctioning of the shoot to kill policy. 

In 1981 along with 11 others I was arrested and charged as a terrorist on conspiracy to cause explosions and endanger life. We said we were not terrorists, but victims of terror. Many people said the only conspiracy was police conspiracy. At that time people came out in their thousands to defend us. We were all acquitted. Now if people talk in support of those the police declare as terrorists, they can be arrested, and locked up indefinitely without trial and without even the knowledge of the evidence against them - in this very civilised of societies. 

Even before the bombs of 7th July, basic human rights in this country were under severe attack. Apart from curtailing human rights in this country, the ‘war on terror’ and in particular the London bombs are being used to delegitimise the just struggles for national liberation across the world. Already over 20 organisations, including Palestinians and Tamil have been banned. The ‘War on Terror’ is being used as a smokescreen to deny people living in this country the right to support struggles for justice. The government is now planning to make it a crime even to support the struggle of Palestinians by making any form of support direct or implied for ‘suicide bombers’ unlawful. But as Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London pointed out, “if a young Jewish boy in this country goes and joins the Israeli army, and ends up killing many Palestinians in operations and can come back, that is wholly legitimate, but for a young Muslim boy in this country, who might think: I want to defend my Palestinian brothers and sisters and gets involved, he is branded as a terrorist. And I think it is this that has infected the attitude about how we deal with these problems." 

Organise

The need of today is to stand up to the racist Labour Party and the war mongers. Those who voted for Labour Party during the last general elections should re-examine their position. A vote for Labour or Tory, or any party that did not actively oppose the invasion of Iraq is support for the destruction of Iraq a death of tens and thousands of Iraqis. Iraqi life is no less important that the life of westerners. All people in the UK, irrespective of their religion or background must demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. 

At the moment it is becoming increasingly unsafe even to walk on the streets. We must not live here in fear. As in the past people who are attacked have the right to defend themselves. But we cannot do so on our own. Muslims need to organise themselves but also along with others. The lessons of the past are that only by organising together, irrespective of race, colour or religion can we hope to build a better world. This is true today more than ever before.

Tariq Mehmood co-directed INJUSTICE a film about death in police custody in Britain. He was one of the main defendants in the case of the Bradford 12, where he along with 11 others was tried on terrorist charges in 1982. All 12 were acquitted. Tariq’s is the author of While There Is Light, a novel based on the experience of being imprisoned in 1981. Tariq is also the editor of Sangi. Contact: tariq_mehmood1@onetel.com

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