Students are today holding a meeting at Middlesex University in support of its student union president who was suspended for refusing to cancel a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Keith Shilson was escorted from the campus last week by university security after he refused to cancel the question and answer session with the group, which the prime minister is considering proscribing as part of the government’s crackdown on extremism. The move by the university’s vice-chancellor Michael Driscoll to ban the debate came days after the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, told vice-chancellors they would have to play a part to tackle extremism on campus.

Guardian, 27 September 2005

Islam is not the threat to our planet

By Ken Livingstone

Morning Star, 24 September 2005

The terrorist attacks on London in July brought out the best in millions of people. As we came to terms with the horror of the attacks, Londoners made clear they were not going to be divided by terrorists, nor by anyone trying to exploit those tragic events.

This was shown a week later when millions came out onto the streets to stand side by side with people of every race and religion in memory of those who had lost their lives.

Some tabloid newspapers ran articles praising Britain’s Muslim leaders who urged their communities to help the police to find anyone connected with the planning or execution of the attacks.

The dozens of opinion polls since the attacks showed the same pattern. People want everything possible done to prevent further attacks.

At the same time, two thirds of people support multiculturalism and believe it makes Britain a better place to live and three out of four people think Britain’s role in Iraq made it more vulnerable.

Nonetheless, since 7 July, and far more openly since the attempted bombings two weeks later, there has also been a steadily mounting campaign by the right wing media and others to exploit the attacks to try to smash the progressive response to the bombings.

The ideological axis of this is the idea that the world is increasingly dominated by a “clash of civilisations” in which Islam is pitted against the West.

In an ironic mirror image of Al Qaeda’s denunciations of the West, Islam is portrayed as uniquely evil, or, in the left variants, uniquely reactionary.

In this latter camp can be found a whole raft of supposedly “left-wing” internet blogs.

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“About fifteen years ago Muslims in Britain fought a long battle for the defence of Islam after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s blasphemous novel ‘The Satanic Verses’. In the two months since the bomb-blasts in London on July 7, it has become increasingly clear that Muslims in Britain face a similar battle now, as secular and liberal fundamentalists in Britain use the bombings as opportunity and justification for a much wider attack on the Muslim community in this country. Although it is entirely understandable that the British authorities should step up security precautions, and intensify investigations of those tiny and marginal groups among Muslims that espouse the sort of appalling violence that was seen on July 7, British politicians and many media and social commentators have turned the debate about the attacks of July 7 into a debate about Islam and Muslims in Britain and, in many cases, another full-scale offensive on Islam in this country.”

Iqbal Siddiqui at Media Monitors Network, 26 September 2005