We must not
resort to reprisals following terror attacks, writes Struan Stevenson The
Finsbury Park mosque attack in London is the latest horrific outrage to stun
public opinion. So many innocent lives have been taken in recent terrorist
attacks that many people in the UK are now clamoring for an appropriate
response. The tit-for-tat nature of these events plays perfectly into the hands
of the terrorists, whose aim is to set one section of society against another.
We must not allow this to happen. It is too easy to get caught up in debates
about the proportional value of solutions that involve an increased security
presence and those that call for deeper engagement with, for example, Muslim
communities, to identify and root out extremist voices within. But following
the Finsbury Park atrocity, should we also be calling for deeper engagement and
surveillance within primarily white, British communities to root out
extremists? Following the Manchester and London Bridge atrocities there was an
inevitable reaction from certain factions of the public and even some factions
of the political establishment that immediately attempted to lay the blame at
the feet of our British Muslim communities. This is a common knee-jerk
reaction, which is not only logically unsound it is also terribly impractical,
because the demonization and alienation of moderate Muslims from British
society is just the outcome that the terrorists would like. There is a naïve
assumption that if moderate Muslims were just more vigilant, the authorities in
Britain and throughout the Western world would never be caught off guard by new
attacks. But Muslim communities are just as caught off guard as we are and they
are no more to blame for the Manchester or London attacks than the majority of
white Britons were to blame for the Finsbury Park mosque outrage. The
extremists who murdered indiscriminately in Manchester and on London Bridge are
no more representatives of the Muslim community than the white driver of the
van who allegedly ploughed into innocent bystanders outside Finsbury Park
Mosque can be said to represent the majority white British community. These
people are extremists. They are fanatics. We cannot and must not attempt to
label the communities they come from in the same fashion. People affected by
the recent attacks need our support. It was heart-warming to see the response
from all sectors of society for the survivors of each of these tragedies, in
particular the horrific Grenfell Flats fire. Muslims, Christians, people of all
religions and none, came together to provide money, clothing, food and shelter,
confounding the hate preachers and lifting the dark shadow which has been cast
over peace-loving people everywhere. Britons of every ethnic and religious
background must work together to make sure that police forces are given the
assistance they need, that moderate and peaceful dialogue is maintained no
matter what the underlying ideology and that the extreme fringe of Islam,
right-wing fascists, left-wing thugs, or indeed any other religious or
political movement are denied a platform anywhere in our society.
The
extremists on both sides want us to believe that Islam and
Western democracy
are incompatible. Their objective is to force more and more impressionable
people to take a side. But of course this is simply wrong-headed.
Anti-democratic systems of government in places like Iran are not a consequence
of the dominant religion, they are simply a blight on the region that prevents
mainstream Muslims bringing their religion fully into the light of the modern
world. Still, the world is full of Muslim citizens who are striving to achieve
that goal, either by participating in and actively supporting the societies and
political institutions of the UK and other Western democracies, or by struggling
to bring a secular, democratic system of government to the Middle Eastern
nations that gave rise to ISIS and other forms of violent, political Islam in
the first place.
For example, in Paris on July 1, the National Council of
Resistance of Iran (NCRI) will be holding its annual Iran Freedom rally, which
in recent years has been attended by upwards of 100,000 Iranian expatriates and
their European supporters, including hundreds of dignitaries from political and
academic circles in various nations of the world. Each such event reiterates
the 10-point plan for democracy and justice promoted by NCRI President MaryamRajavi, a Muslim like the overwhelming majority of the organization’s members.
The plan calls for a truly secular democratic government in Iran, where
religion is separated from the state, the death penalty is abolished and men
and women have equal rights. A plan that repudiates the existing regime’s long
history of sponsoring terrorism and bolstering sectarian conflicts in the
region and throughout the world. This and other gatherings of moderate Muslims
should serve as a reminder to the people of the UK and Europe in the aftermath
of recent terrorist attacks that there are Muslims all around us who dedicate
their very lives to demonstrating the abiding compatibility between Islam and
our cherished rights to live, believe and worship in freedom and peace. Those
of us who are not of the same faith and those of us of no faith must do
everything in our power to promote that message and to recognize that the
conflict at hand is not between Islam and the West, but rather between
extremists and those who believe in coexistence and would defend the rights of
all people from Britain to Middle East and throughout the world. Struan
Stevenson is president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA). He was
a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland from 1999-2014
Read more at:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/struan-stevenson-reprisals-are-not-the-answer-to-terror-1-4484921
