A threat to the world

19 August 2006

Stephen Schwartz, who has travelled the world studying the faith to which he converted, says that Britain has allowed doctrinal poison imported from Pakistan to flourish here as nowhere else. We must act, or face terrible consequences

Apart from Ramadan, the risible roadshow has included a Kuwaiti jihadist, Tariq al-Suweidan, and a Californian charlatan, Joe Hanson, alias Hamza Yusuf. Hanson varies his message according to his audience: when he speaks before crowds where jihadists dominate, he proudly repudiates any questioning of radical Islam and shouts his hope that others will also ‘fail the test’ of moderate belief. But in meetings with non-Muslims he claims to be the number one enemy of Wahabism in the West, describes himself as an adviser to George W. Bush (on the basis of a single comment at a gathering) and postures as a spiritual Sufi.

Still, if al-Qa’eda may generally be traced to Saudi Arabia and the doctrines of Wahabism, the cancer that threatens British Islam has an essential Pakistani connection. Pakistan’s military ruler, Pervaiz Musharraf, continues to promise the US and the UK that he is a firm ally against extremism, and his emissaries plead that Pakistan is an equal, if not a more vulnerable and suffering, victim of terror. But Musharraf appears impotent to do anything about it apart from the occasional arrest.

Pakistan has a level of uncontrolled Islamist bloodshed exceeded only by Iraq. Along with adherents of Wahabism, the country is swarming with fanatics of the fundamentalist Deobandi sect, which originated in India and part of which metastasised into the Taleban. The Masjid-e-Umer mosque in Walthamstow, a converted synagogue attended by at least eight of the alleged terror plot suspects, is a Deobandi institution. These homicidally inclined ideologues summon the madrassa boys to riot for the benefit of global television news. They do so at the command of political parties standing for exclusive sharia law, fundamentalist theology and aid to the Taleban and al-Qa’eda. Among these movements, some merely drench the mosques and streets of Pakistan with blood, like the infamous murder machine known as Sipah-e-Sahaba or Knights of the Prophet’s Companions. Others, bearing such names as Jamaat-i-Islami (Community of Islam) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous), maintain extensive international paramilitary networks.