Madeleine Bunting’s Guardian article yesterday made the mistake of treating international Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i-Islami as if they are the primitive products of third world victims of colonialism rather than sophisticated totalitarian movements.
The errors in the piece are too numerous to mention, although David T at Harry’s Place has done an excellent job of dismantling it.
But there is one curious passage towards the end which should not go unchallenged. Bunting makes the following claim: “A recent meeting at the Home Office on how to combat extremism attracted few Muslims but several journalists – including those who have lobbied hard that the government should withdraw from any engagement with organisations with historical links to Islamism, the broad 20th-century movement of political Islam. Their lobbying succeeded in freezing out a wide range of organisations, including the Muslim Council of Britain.”
It is sometimes difficult to work out Bunting’s cryptic language but I can only think she is referring to a meeting held by Home Office minister Tony McNulty last month. I was one of two journalists present (there were not several of us). An academic and a representative from an American think tank were also there. I don’t know what counts as few, but out of the eight invitees there were four Muslims representing a range of views. The meeting was held under Chatham House rules, so I won’t go into what was discussed, but the debate was extremely robust.
If Bunting is referring to me as someone who has “lobbied hard that the government should withdraw from any engagement with organisations with historical links to Islamism”, then she has wilfully misunderstood one of the conclusions of my Policy Exchange pamphlet When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries. This called for “an end to the Government’s policy of ‘engagement for engagement’s sake’ with the MCB.” It continued: “Any body that represents itself as speaking for the Muslim community must demonstrate that is entirely non-sectarian and non-factional. The MCB has consistently failed in this area and the Government should consider cutting all ties until it has thoroughly reformed itself. For too long, the Government has chosen as its favoured partner an organisation which is undemocratic, divisive and unrepresentative of the full diversity of Muslim Britain.”
The key phrase is “until it has thoroughly reformed itself”. Indeed, since Ruth Kelly began the process of freezing out the MCB, the organisation has begun that process of reform. It now seems likely that it will vote to attend Holocaust Memorial Day next year, for instance. This process of internal reform may be a strategic move to win back favour with ministers (the organisation’s stance on homosexuality and “apostate” Muslim sects my take longer to change). But it should never the less be encouraged.
The MCB no longer recieves government funding, it no longer has the monopoly on advice to ministers and its senior officers no longer travel the world as de facto ambassadors for the UK. This is also to be welcomed. If my lobbying has in any way helped, then I am delighted.
But the MCB has not been frozen out entirely. What Madeleine Bunting fails to mention (perhaps because it does not suit her argument, or perhaps because she didn’t know) is that one of the Muslims present at the Home Office meeting was Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain. But such organisations are now being held at arm’s length from government rather than driving the agenda. And as a result,the process of reform is beginning.
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