Until his imprisonment in 2004, the Egyptian-born imam Abu Hamza bulked large in British demonology. With his eye patch and hooked hand, Hamza was portrayed as a sinister mullah who abused British hospitality by execrating the British way of life and encouraging his followers to wage jihad against the British infidel. Indeed, if Hamza had not existed, the tabloid press might have had to invent him. Not only did he fit to perfection Islamophobic perceptions of the Muslim as a rabid fanatic, he could also be presented by right-wing opinion as proof that the effort to establish a multiracial society in Britain had been a terrible mistake.
Hamza’s incarceration met with widespread satisfaction, not least among British Muslims, many of whom were outraged by the way the British media treated him, as though he were their chosen spokesman. However, his removal from the scene could be said to have deprived tabloid newspapers of an indispensable hate figure, whose very presence in Britain represented an affront to vaunted British traditions of tolerance. There was a vacancy for a new “enemy within”.
Last week, the British black Muslim convert Abu Izzadeen made a bid to fill that vacancy when, in front of the massed ranks of the British media, he delivered a furious denunciation of Home Secretary John Reid, who had gone to East London to urge Muslim parents to watch out for signs of extremist tendencies among their offspring. The thrust of his attack was that Reid had no right to come to a Muslim neighborhood and lecture Muslims after authorizing the systematic harassment of Muslim people and after playing a leading part in a government which has been terrorizing Muslims both at home and abroad. With his white hooded robe, blazing eyes and stentorian voice, Izzadeen cut a menacing figure. Not that John Reid looked in the least bit menaced; indeed, the more Izzadeen fulminated, the less perturbed Reid appeared to be. The burly home secretary seemed to be enjoying himself.
Commentators pointed out how curious it was that the massive security by which the home secretary is enveloped was so easily penetrated. Izzadeen is after all a known extremist who believes that Britain ought to be subject to Shariah law and who has commended the perpetrators of last year’s July suicide bombings in London. The explanation that he somehow simply slipped through the net is hard to credit. At any rate, Reid was soon turning the episode to his political advantage. Preening himself on his commitment to free speech, the normally abrasive Scotsman projected himself in television interviews as a reasonable man who had suffered the indignity of being howled down by a demagogue.
In the eyes of “middle England”, Izzadeen’s venomous outburst could not but make the tough stand Reid has been taking on national security look more than ever justified: It provided him, moreover, with the perfect platform to tell this year’s Labour Party conference that Britain will not allow itself to be “browbeaten by bullies” and that the idea any area of Britain might be out of bounds for a minister is intolerable. Certainly, Reid is benefiting greatly from the “war on terror”.
He is now one of several potential rivals to fellow Scotsman, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, as the next leader of the Labour Party and successor to Tony Blair. Loathing Brown with a personal rather than ideological passion, “Blairites” evidently see Reid as the politician who could best safeguard Blair’s “reformist” legacy, which may be summed up as the promotion of free markets and blanket endorsement of the foreign policy agenda of US President George W. Bush.
To Brown’s discomfort, Reid’s tough guy posturing is playing well with the British public — a fact which he chancellor’s enemies will be trying hard to exploit in order to persuade Labour Party members that he is the man most likely to keep Labour in power beyond the next general election.
Reid’s well wishers will have been gratified by the part the BBC played last week in building on his encounter with the new “enemy within”. Soon after his infiltration of Reid’s meeting with East London Muslims, Abu Izzadeen was vouchsafed exposure on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today program. Not only was he interviewed by the heavy-weight BBC interviewer, John Humphreys, he was interviewed by him at extraordinary length.
The interview was bound to indicate to many that Izzadeen is no mere Islamist firebrand but a representative figure whose apparent approval of terrorism and contempt for British democracy is widely shared by British Muslims. Formerly, the BBC was apt to invoke Abu Hamza as a Muslim spokesman and though it would be too much to suggest that the BBC and the British political establishment are leagued together in a conspiracy to demonize Muslims, parts of the corporation, notably BBC News 24, have done little to dispel the impression that the British Muslim community is dominated by outrageous fanatics.
None of this means that Abu Izzadeen did not have reason to castigate Reid for his presumption in instructing Muslims how to run their families, or that in attacking the government of Blair he was saying things with which many Muslims, not to mention large numbers of non-Muslims, are not in broad agreement. It is a plain fact that Prime Minister Blair has adopted a dictatorial approach over the prosecution of war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, riding roughshod over public opinion in general and Muslim opinion in particular. Moreover, as the chaos in Iraq deepens, what defense is left to Blair against the charge that his involvement of Britain in an ill-judged and illegal war has left him with much blood on his hands?
If there is an overriding objecting to Abu Izzadeen, it is to his manner. His whole style implies that Islam is a religion of hatred, a faith based on violence and intimidation. Listening to his diatribes, non-Muslims could be forgiven for concluding that dialogue is something in which Muslims are neither willing nor able to participate.
Yet dialogue is hardly being encouraged by the British government, either. Its approach to the Muslim community has been nothing if not patronizing. What has become increasingly apparent is just how deeply rooted colonial reflexes remain in the British psyche, including the psyches of “progressive” politicians. In this respect, to be sure, there is little enough to choose between John Reid and Gordon Brown. Both are only too ready to wrap themselves in the Union Jack, with Brown much given to boasting about the huge contribution Britain has made to civilizing mankind. If this pair of power-hungry Scotsmen are about to become locked in combat over the leadership of the Labour Party, they will no doubt seek to outstrip one another in professions of patriotism and tough talk about “terror” and national security. The truth is that the New Labour Party launched by Blair has become indistinguishable from US neoconservatism in its crude appeal to nationalism, reactionary sentiment and Islamophobia.
