LONDON, 15 January 2007 — British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, staking his premiership credentials as the successor to lame duck Prime Minister Tony Blair — who has confirmed that he will be retiring later this year — has embarked on a major “hearts and minds” offensive with British Muslims which he maintains is the best way to defeat radicalism and terrorism.
Brown, who is off today on a tour of India, it was revealed yesterday, has also sent his close adviser and senior treasury minister Ed Balls to the Middle East twice in recent months, underlining his belief that the Arab-Israeli conflict remains a major cause of radicalism among young Muslims in the UK and elsewhere, and his government would give priority in trying to resolve the conflict.
Balls speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World this Weekend yesterday warned that the government should have “done more at an earlier stage to fight the cultural war” against terrorism. He stressed that alongside the military and security considerations, there was a need for a “stronger cultural dimension” to tackle extremism especially among young Muslims.
“We should have done more at an earlier stage to fight the cultural war — which isn’t to say that you would have done less on military and security, but you would have had that stronger cultural dimension too. In the same way, I’ve been doing a great deal of work on the Middle East and the Palestinian and Israeli peace process... that is an inherently political challenge, but at the same time there’s a very important economic dimension. And probably in retrospect we should have done more on the economic road map to allow economics and prosperity to support the political process,” he explained.
Brown has been accused of seeing everything, especially foreign policy, primarily from an economic point of view. He has been accused of being thin on foreign policy experience, which his political supporters have dismissed. They point out to his pioneering work in the cancellation of the sovereign debt of some Third World Debt countries and also his championing of better terms of trade for emerging countries in the last two rounds of talks of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Brown in the last few months has been increasing his foreign policy profile — giving speeches on topics not normally in the ambit of a UK Chancellor and visiting countries such as Iraq normally off his radar as the minister of finance. He was a reluctant and low profile supporter of President George Bush and Tony Blair’s “war on terrorism,” although his role in the “financial war on terrorism” has been more marked.
On Saturday at a Fabian Society conference in London, chaired by former Labour Member of Parliament Oona King, the chancellor, in a clear indication of his intentions should he become prime minister, said it was important to win “hearts and minds” to defeat terrorism and to improve the UK’s security.
“If you take security, which is a huge issue now, I actually think what’s been undervalued is the importance of winning hearts and minds. You will not solve the security issues we face, particularly in relation to terrorism, simply by military, policing, intelligence and security action, important as these are,” he explained.
One of Brown’s pet topics is “Britishness” — built around his belief of shared values of fairness and social justice rather than ethnicity. In the light of the current fighting in the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia, the chancellor also touched on another pet topic — Africa, which he said is a strategic as well as moral issue for him and was a frontline in the fight against terrorism and that bringing Africans out of poverty would be a top priority for his leadership.
Last week, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke said Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy aspirations had “turned to dust” given his near-messianic support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. At the same Charles questioned whether Brown would provide “committed international engagement.” One area of course whereBrown, in his capacity as Chancellor, has built up strong credibility with Britain’s 2 million or so Muslim community, is in Islamic finance as part of the Labour government’s social and financial inclusion policies.
Brown has leverages Islamic finance as a key function of engagement with the UK’s Muslims communities. At a conference in London toward the end of 2006, Brown declared that Britain is well on the way of becoming a key hub for facilitating Islamic finance and trade between the UK and the Muslim countries.
Later this month, Ed Balls will give the keynote presentation at another Islamic finance conference in London, consolidating the government’s view that London is a major enabling and structuring center for global Islamic finance. Both Messrs Brown and Balls have close relations with organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the British Muslim Forum.
Thus far, Brown has abolished the double stamp duty for Islamic Ijara and Diminishing Musharaka mortgages for both residential and commercial property transactions, giving Muslims and others interested in Islamic finance, access to alternative financial products based on their faith.
He is also working on creating a level playing field for risk weighting (the money banks have to put aside for covering their loans) for Islamic mortgages and their conventional counterparts. At the moment the risk weighting for Islamic mortgages is 100 percent while for conventional mortgages it is 50 percent. As such, this pushes up the cost of Islamic mortgages, which are then deemed less competitive than conventional mortgages.
Brown is committed to iron out this anomaly.
