THE DECISION of the only Muslim member of the British cabinet to charge last night that Islamophobia had become acceptable in the United Kingdom has caused tensions within the Conservative Party.
In a speech in Oxford, the vice-chairman of the Conservatives, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, said Britain had in the past not been comfortable with identifiable religious minorities, pointing to the discrimination suffered by the Catholic Church.
“It’s not a big leap of imagination to predict where the talk of “moderate” Muslims leads: in the factory where they’ve just hired a Muslim worker, the boss says to his employees: ‘Not to worry, he’s only fairly Muslim’.
“In the school, the kids say: ‘The family next door are Muslim, but they’re not too bad’. And in the road, as a woman walks past wearing a burka, the passersby think: ‘That woman’s either oppressed or is making a political statement’.”
She continued: “Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law. They also should face social rejection and alienation across society, and their acts must not be used as an opportunity to tar all Muslims,” she said.
In an interview before her speech, Baroness Warsi said: “At various times, Britain has not been at ease with various religious minorities, whether that’s the Catholic community, eventually resulting in Catholic emancipation, or more recently, the British Jewish community.
“We must bring some of those lessons to the rise of anti-Muslim hatred.
“Sadly one of the concerns that has been raised as I travel around the country is that somehow, because there are a minority of people who commit criminal acts who come from the faith of Islam, that somehow means that it is fair game to have a go at the community as a whole,” she said.
Her speech was not cleared with Downing Street in advance and it appears to have caused some difficulties, with officials pointedly making it clear yesterday evening they only knew about it when they heard limited extracts from it had been given to the Daily Telegraph in advance.
In his new year message, prime minister David Cameron adopted a different tone when he said the “overwhelming majority of British Muslims who detest this extremism must help us to find the answers together”, so Britain could stop “the radicalisation and poisoning of the minds of some young British Muslims who then contemplate and sometimes carry out acts of sickening barbarity”.
Former cabinet minister Norman Tebbit was not alone among Conservatives in believing prejudice was more likely to originate from the Islamic community than from the rest of the British population.
“Had Baroness Warsi sought my advice, I would have counselled her not to make the speech,” he wrote in his blog. “I would have told her that the Muslim faith was not discussed over the dinner tables of England, nor in the saloon bars, before large numbers of Muslims came here to our country.
“Then I would have told her to go to our Christian churches and listen to what was said about her religion and those who practise it, then to the mosques to hear what is said in some of them about the Christian faith and those who practise it (or about Buddhists, Jews, or even those who have no faith at all).
“After that, I would say, she might consider who is in need of her homilies on prejudice. Until then, a period of silence from the Baroness might not come amiss.”
