Sadiq, segregation and ‘non-violent extremism’ — how not to win the London mayoral election
Last Thursday, Labour’s London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan delivered a speech to the House of Commons Press Gallery in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris.
It proved very popular with the Tory press, producing headlines such as “Sadiq Khan: Muslims are growing up in this country without ever ‘knowing anyone from a different background’” (Daily Telegraph), “Majority of Muslims ‘have met an extremist’, says Sadiq Khan” (Daily Mail) and “Sadiq Khan: UK Muslims must do more to root out cancer of extremism” (Evening Standard). The Sun admired Sadiq’s speech so much that they published an edited version as a comment piece, and quoted it in their appalling front page article accusing British Muslims of supporting ISIS.
What was it about Sadiq’s speech that so aroused the enthusiasm of reactionary anti-Muslim newspapers? Here’s an excerpt:
For decades successive governments have tolerated segregation in British society. In doing so, we’ve allowed the conditions that permit extremism to continue unchecked.
We’ve protected people’s right to live their cultural life at the expense of creating a common life. Too many British Muslims grow up without really knowing anyone from a different background. Without understanding or empathising with the lives and beliefs of others.
And too many British people have never befriended a Muslim. Never worked together, never eaten together, never played sports together. As a result, too many people have formed a single identity — too often based around their religion or ethnicity.
This creates the conditions for extremism and radicalisation to take hold.
It is difficult to see this as anything other than an attempt to blame Muslims for fostering extremism through self-segregation. True, it mentions the failure of “British people” to befriend Muslims (who apparently don’t fall into the category of British people). But the main thrust of Sadiq’s argument is that Muslims, through forming separate communities, are responsible for the conditions that provide a breeding ground for terrorism.
You may think you’ve heard this nonsense before, and you’d be right. Sadiq’s argument is lifted from “After 7/7: Sleepwalking to segregation”, the notorious 2005 speech by Trevor Phillips, in which he suggested that multiculturalism bore responsibility for the London bombings. Phillips complained:
In recent years we’ve focused far too much on the ‘multi’ and not enough on the common culture. We’ve emphasized what divides us over what unites us. We have allowed tolerance of diversity to harden into the effective isolation of communities, in which some people think special separate values ought to apply.
Nobody — neither Sadiq Khan nor Trevor Phillips before him — has presented any convincing evidence to substantiate their claim that living a culturally separate life makes Muslims more likely to embrace violent extremism. And that is hardly surprising, since no such evidence exists. In their 2009 book Sleepwalking to Segregation?’ Challenging Myths About Race and Migration (pp.109–10) Nissa Finney and Ludi Simpson analysed the data for the districts of origin of Muslims charged with terrorist offences. They wrote:
If “segregated areas”, where there are the largest concentrations of Muslims, were hotbeds of terrorism … then one would expect more to be charged in these areas. Seventeen of those charged in the period August 2004 to October 2006 were residents of Bradford, Luton, Newham or Wandsworth, four of the seven most Muslim districts where 18% of the population is Muslim. But just as many lived in other areas; for example, 16 lived in the districts with on average only 1% Muslims, coming from Breckland in Norfolk, Doncaster, Bournemouth, Reigate in Surrey, Bexley, Brighton and Hove, Aylesbury Vale and Greenwich.
The authors concluded:
The overall message is clear — that concentrations of Muslims are not after all associated with terrorism. Indeed, following the news reports many of those charged with terrorism in Britain give the impression of well-educated, integrated individuals….
A case in point was Mohammad Sidique Khan. Far from growing up “without really knowing anyone from a different background”, the future leader of the 7/7 bombers readily mixed socially with non-Muslims during his youth. To quote a BBC News profile:
The Beeston of Khan’s youth was a largely white neighbourhood — and indeed he seems to have spent most of his time in the company of white English lads…. Their accounts of Khan’s upbringing and character show a man who spent most of his formative years not really mixing with other local Muslims…. Khan was, by all accounts, an exceptionally well integrated person. His anglicised name “Sid” was just one symbol of his willingness to take on a British identity.
That didn’t prevent “Sid” from embracing a violent form of Islamism and organising the murder of 52 innocent people in retaliation for Western foreign policy.
Some studies have found that young Muslims who actively engage with wider society are more likely to turn to violent extremism. The explanation is that they directly face hostility and discrimination from the non-Muslim majority population of the societies into which they are trying to integrate (in contrast to Muslims leading more separate lives, who are shielded to some extent from such experiences), with the result that they become embittered and alienated. This is referred to as the “integration paradox”.
Sadiq Khan isn’t the only person trying to persuade Londoners that Muslim self-segregation facilitates recruitment to terrorist organisations. On Saturday morning Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society appeared on Andrew Pierce’s LBC radio show to discuss the atrocities in Paris. He attributed these to the establishment of majority-Muslim areas in France and Belgium, and warned that the same threat faces the UK. LBC were so impressed by Murray’s argument that they posted a clip of his interview on their website, under the headline “Muslim ghettos fuel terrorism in Europe”.
To bolster this thesis, Murray drew on research by the HJS which revealed that, as he put in an article for the Spectator, “nine tenths of Birmingham’s convicted terrorists come from areas where the Muslim population is between 25 and 50 per cent (the latter figure being more than ten times the national average)”.
Murray omits to mention that Muslims make up 22 per cent of the population of Birmingham — and that’s across the entire city, including districts where relatively few Muslims live. The Muslim community is in fact heavily concentrated in particular areas of Birmingham. So you would expect most Muslims from Birmingham who are convicted of terrorist offences to come from such districts. It merely reflects the fact that the large majority of Muslims in that city live in areas where there is a much higher percentage of Muslim inhabitants than the national average. It by no means demonstrates that Muslims from such areas have a greater propensity to engage in violent extremism.
In last Thursday’s speech, Sadiq Khan didn’t restrict himself to endorsing the same myth about Muslim segregation and terrorism that is promoted by raving Islamophobes like Murray and the HJS. He went on to say: “Extremism isn’t a theoretical risk. Most British Muslims have come across someone with extremist views at some point…”. And he urged Muslims to challenge such people when they encounter them. Who did Sadiq have in mind? Well, apparently these dangerous extremists include: “People who look and sound like normal Londoners, until they say that 9/11 was a Mossad conspiracy.” At which point, apparently, they reveal themselves as potential recruits to ISIS.
Again, Sadiq invents nothing new here. The “Mossad conspiracy” test for extremism is lifted directly from David Cameron, who presented the exact same argument in a speech in July this year. Cameron’s claim that those who hold such views are extremists provoked an indignant response from one Peter Drew, a 9/11 Truther who was outraged at being labelled an extremist. Of course, neither Cameron nor Khan have suggested that conspiracy theorists like Drew are anything other than harmless if annoying eccentrics. It’s only Muslims holding such opinions who are portrayed as a threat to society.
Among other examples of the “hideous views” that need to be confronted by responsible Muslims, Sadiq listed beliefs that “Western foreign policy is the cause of all the world’s problems”, that “there could be a land of milk and honey, if there was an Islamic kalifate”, and that “Muslims shouldn’t take part in democracy … we shouldn’t help to make man-made laws”.
The views Sadiq finds so hideously extremist are those that members of Hizb ut-Tahrir would subscribe to, yet HT are firmly opposed to terrorism and have publicly declared their rejection of ISIS and its ideology. They pose no security threat whatsoever. There may be good reasons to oppose HT’s sectarian methods and abstentionist position on parliamentary democracy, but deterring terrorist attacks is not one of them.
What Sadiq is doing here is reinforcing another myth — namely that there is a connection between “non-violent extremism” and terrorism, and that the former leads to the latter (the so-called “conveyor belt” theory). Again, there is no evidence to support this contention, even though it is central to the government’s counter-terrorism policy. As the Prevent strategy puts it, “preventing terrorism will mean challenging extremist (and non-violent) ideas that are also part of a terrorist ideology”. Sadiq rightly argues that there is a need to “radically overhaul” Prevent, but he happily lends credence to the false analysis that underpins it.
Far from being embarrassed by the enthusiastic response of the Tory press to his speech, Sadiq welcomed it. He has obviously been advised that the road to victory in next year’s mayoral election is to tack to the right — attack Jeremy Corbyn, dissociate himself from Ken Livingstone, and follow this up by claiming that Muslims provide the conditions for terrorism by failing to integrate and lecturing them on the need to oppose extremism. Aside from producing crap politics, it’s a serious misreading of the situation.
If he wants to win next May, Sadiq should be promoting the same sort of radical programme that Livingstone did. It would include a clear defence of multiculturalism and opposition to the myths that encourage racism and Islamophobia. One in eight Londoners is a Muslim, and Sadiq as the only Muslim mayoral candidate should be well placed to win their votes. Instead he appears intent on antagonising this important section of the electorate — all in the interest of gaining the approbation of the Telegraph, the Mail and the Evening Standard.
Turnout for London mayoral elections is low — it was 38% in 2012 and will quite possibly be less than that in 2016. The challenge for Sadiq is to motivate natural Labour supporters in working class, multi-ethnic areas of London to actually come out and vote for him. And also to win at least the second preferences of the 8%-10% of progressive middle-class voters who’ll back the Green Party in the London Assembly elections. Not try and win over Tory voters by opportunistically adopting stances that attract favourable coverage in the right-wing press, which appears to be the current strategy. That’s the road to political disaster.