Posted on 11/10/2005 7:17:18 AM PST by F14 Pilot
The growth of political Islam is one of the most important ideological events of the past century. In these features, BBC Radio Four's Analysis programme charts the growth of this ideology - and its stunning effects around the world, including Britain. Islam is a faith and code of conduct for over a billion people worldwide. But for some, Islam is also a political project. On these pages, you can read and hear the history of political Islam's development. Koran and Country: How Islam got Political is broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Thursday 10 November at 8pm.
The news that British Muslims could have bombed their fellow citizens came as a shock to many people - but not one East End Muslim.
Aminul Hoque, a 28-year old journalist and PhD student, says that although support for violence is low, alienation has grown steadily in his Muslim neighbourhood in London's East End.
"This resentment, this level of anger aimed towards anybody who is a non-Muslim has been there for a long time," he says.
Islam, like all major faiths, is primarily spiritual and is a code of conduct for over a billion people. But today, a more political set of Islamic ideas has gained ground in Britain's Muslim community.
The reason for the popularity of "political Islam" is unclear - and many Muslims don't accept the term "political Islam" at all.
Others say politicisation is a reaction to poverty and racism here and Western foreign policy abroad.
What is clear is that "political Islam" is new in Britain. The faith that South Asian Muslim immigrants brought with them in the 50s and 60s was traditional, a spiritual tonic to difficult lives.
Perhaps surprisingly, given that Britain's Muslim community is mostly from Islam's majority Sunni sect and South Asian, much of the early inspiration for people to follow a more political Islam came from the Shia revolution in Iran.
The Ayatollah's British 'Revolution'
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 turned political Islam from a dream into a reality.
One of the most powerful and populous countries in the Middle East overthrew its pro-western monarch, the Shah, and replaced him with a theocracy. Iran's new leader was Ayatollah Khomeini, a devout cleric who'd been living in exile in France.
But not many people realise that the Ayatollah had strong British connections.
In London, a small group of British Muslims had created a think tank, The Muslim Institute. It aimed to assert the political identity of the Islamic faith. Its leader was the charismatic Dr Kalim Siddidqui.
The group regarded the Iranian revolution as something genuinely Islamic, not caring whether it was Shias or Sunnis who led it.
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, one of those involved in the group, felt it represented "anti-imperialist, genuine independence."
"They were going to take decisions on their own," he says. "Even their mistakes would be their own, rather than imposed from outside. This was very, very attractive to us and we were the first people in the whole Sunni world who came out to support the revolution."
In Britain, the public had hardly heard of this group. It was almost a decade later when Dr Kalim Siddiqui used a turn of events to seek the leadership of British Islam.
Rushdie affair
"Burn, Rushdie, Burn!" was one of the cries heard from some British Muslims in 1988 as they protested against Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. The book had infuriated Muslims by apparently ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad.
Rushdie did not of course burn; he went into hiding, after being accused of blasphemy.
While many Muslims felt anger and frustration, Kalim Siddiqui saw a political opportunity.
He and his associates in the Muslim Institute visited Iran in February 1989. On the day of their return, the Ayatollah issued a legal edict, or fatwa, saying Rushdie should be killed.
Dr Siddiqui now took on a leading role, publicly supporting the fatwa. With him at the helm, it was almost as if the Rushdie affair gave British Muslims their own 'Islamic revolution'.
Muslim Parliament
The Rushdie Affair, complete with its book-burnings on the streests, turned into a public relations disaster.
But for Dr Kalim Siddiqui, the fatwa against Rushdie was an essential vehicle for launching his political vision of a "Muslim Parliament" in 1992.
"The Muslim Parliament was a political institution which would govern Muslims for themselves on the understanding that the rest of society doesn't want to know them - and if that's the case, then that's how they should live," recalls Ehsan Masood, a journalist at the time for the Muslim magazine, Q News.
While the concept of the body effectively died with Kalim Siddiqui in 1996, it had put the idea of political Islam on the map.
While the Parliament withered, another group representing a different strand of ideology sought political leadership of the Muslim community. The UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs rose to prominence and many of its former members are now involved in today's leading Muslim body, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
Some of these people had been, in turn, influenced by a South Asian writer, Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi.
Mawdudi, along with Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, was almost a godfather to the Islamist movement. May of his ideas provided the seeds for future political movements. While he himself opposed violence, some of those who took on his ideas believed they provided a justification for confrontation.
One of the worst thing about the American people is their notoriously short memory span. I remember all-too-well the 444 days American citizens were held captive by those diaper-headed islamo-morons.
Bingo. Jimmy Peanut-brain Carter, that gift that keeps on giving. I turned on NPR yesterday, and there he was, blovating about something, full of self importance. The night before he was on cable news. He's like that fool frog in the pond who puffs himself up until he explodes. Well, we can hope.
The shah had his faults. He was a dictator. But he was a modernizer. And pro-western. And stabbed in the back by Jimmy the Traitor.
Yep.
Jimmy Carter's betrayal of the Shah of Iran was the first great appeasement of radicial Islam. What a moron.
Thanks Jimmah!
Sadly, you make good points. But there's a big difference. W can't be expected to launch a frontal assault on 1.25 billion people. Where would be the gain in that? Your best point, however, is the immigration. We should shut the door to immigrants from countries that produce suicide bombers.
It's looking today like he was a "bad guy" in the same sense that the Serbians, the Russians in Chechnya, and now, President Bush are bad guys - they had enemies that they could only kill...or be killed by.
I don't know if it's just because they are so blind or maybe just because they are just plain old stupid. But these people cannot make the connection that their islamo-political quagmire keeps them from living in a modern world.
"We should shut the door to immigrants from countries that produce suicide bombers."
Not entirely. We need spies, allies, and interpreters. We need to reward those who ally with us.
btt 4 l8r
<< The growth of political Islam is one of the most important ideological events of the past century. >>
Islam has been an invading, conquering, mass-murdering, raping, sexually-mutilating, colonizing and despoiling, "ideologically" political force from the minute of its creation by the insane power-mad pedophile pirate and false-fuhrer, Muhummud.
Your best point, however, is the immigration. We should shut the door to immigrants from countries that produce suicide bombers.
Excluding all muslims from visiting the U.S. for any reason would save us trllions$ in security costs as well as psychiatric costs. The same goes for expelling all muslim non-residents, students, and even "naturalized" muslims who can be demonstrated to be significantly engaged in spreading muslim propaganda, or funding foreign muslim causes; In other words, they obtained citizenship fraudulently.
Yeah, since around 622.
You realize, don't you, that you might not get 100% of your agenda accepted?
<< "Lawrence of Arabia" is the English man who lacked of knowledge about Extreme-Islam. Prasanpanich (I'm Thai) >>
Sawasdee khrap, Khun Prasanpanich. Sabai di mai, khrap?
Welcome to FRee Republic!
"Lawrence of Arabia" is only one of millions of Englishmen who lacked knowledge of just about everything the British Colonial, Foreign and War Offices touched in every foreign land Britain in any way influenced!
32 posted on 11/10/2005 9:58:43 AM PST by Prasanpanich (I'm Thai)
<< One day we can hope Iran will be ruled by the Shah's son who is the rightful heir. >>
With the help of whose army, pray fantasize?
Or will he resuscitate Savak and the torture and murder of thousands more Iranians?
Just as his obscenely corrupt father did during his self-imposed "rule."
God forbid the bloody Pahlavi family personified by Mr Reza Pahlavi or any other of the evil bastards, ever "rule" anything higher the Teheran Dogcatchers department.
And even then, only if the family first surrender all of the looted wealth of Iranians upon which it has waxed fat since the bloody british created its "lineage" and its "rule."
And then, be elected!
I think the so-called sort memory of the American people is just a lazy reporter's excuse for not doing their homework.
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