We are not traitors in your midst

19 August 2006

Yahya Birt — son of John, the former BBC director-general — says that those who choose Islam are not the modern-day equivalent of Soviet moles such as Anthony Blunt

Even if fatwas of peace from the great and learned of the Muslim world are circulated, as they have been, it won’t matter much to puritanical extremists who do not recognise the traditional religious authorities. Imagine the conceit that a papal edict might have been thought effective to calm the IRA in the 1970s. So while there is an undoubted need to condemn dodgy theology, in the long run it won’t be enough to deal with the larger political challenges in the Muslim world. If I had to come up with a phrase to describe why I think anyone would want to blow up those planes, it would be ‘perverted idealism’. According to this type of thinking, Muslim lives are held cheaply and are undefended. To protect Muslims, we must resort to acts of terror, the weapon of the weak. We will stand up and be counted as heroes.

Converts who don’t fit the stereotypical profile are attractive targets for extremist recruiters, as we have seen in the cases of Richard Reid and Jermaine Lindsay. It would be naive to underestimate the moral charge behind that basic appeal. The burning desire to protect the weak and defenceless against the might of modern aerial bombing blurs fine moral distinctions about collateral damage. It is a dangerous romanticism powerful enough to appeal across all sorts of cultural borders.

Extremism passes through religion like an arrow through the body, as Mohammed taught. And it is with this small hope that I look to a future in which the search for political peace takes precedence over the war on terrorism and acts of terror.

Yahya Birt is a research fellow at the Islamic Foundation, Leicestershire.