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Blaming Muslims for the rise of Islamic extremism is now the standard-issue response of the British establishment.
True to form Prime Minister David Cameron's Monday speech about how to get Muslim people to identify with Britain announced nothing but further attacks on Muslims at home and abroad. The speech outlined that a further clampdown on Muslim's civil liberties is necessary in order to get Muslim's to identify more fully with supposed British values of tolerance, democracy and free speech.
His argument that 'non-violent extremism' can lead to 'violent extremism' opens the door to Orwellian levels of surveillance and harassment. A good deal of the speech was spent trying to deny any connection between 'radicalisation' and Muslim's 'historic grievances'. The reason is simple; not content with demonising domestic Muslim communities, he is trying to clear the way for escalating the bombing campaign against Syria, a campaign recent revelations show he has already started in secret and against the will of parliament.
The problem is, all available facts prove his core argument wrong.
In a passage that incidentally seems to undermine the whole campaign, he tries to make the case that extremism is a permanent problem, that there will always be people 'drawn to Islamist extremism'. In fact, the level of terrorist activity changes dramatically over time.
U.S. State Department figures are startlingly clear. As the War on Terror unrolled, the world witnessed probably the biggest increase in terrorist attacks in history. The number of people killed by terrorist attacks spiralled from a few hundred on average in the years before the War on Terror, to 10,000 in 2007, and it has risen since.
Later in his speech David Cameron seemed to contradict the view that perceptions of foreign policy aren't relevant when he argued that recent British foreign policy had been pro-Muslim. He went on to make the case that it is mainly terrorists that are killing Muslims: 'It’s groups like [Islamic State], al-Qaida and Boko Haram that are the ones murdering Muslims.”
Now it is absolutely true that the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks take place in predominantly Muslim countries. According to one study the five countries with the highest terrorist risk are Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But these are not just any Muslim countries. These are amongst the very countries torn apart by western occupations, drones and bombs. Terrorism is part of the bitter legacy of the West's wars, something that has heaped misery on peoples already reeling from the impact of 'Operation Enduring Freedom' and associated disasters.
But Cameron's implication that terrorism has killed more people than recent Western wars is a travesty.
RELATED: US War on Terror Leaves 1.3 Million Dead in Three Countries
Probably the most in-depth study of the impact of the War on Terror suggests that Western military action has led to the death of two million people since 2001. The spread of terrorism is a real and frightening phenomenon, but it hasn't accounted for a fraction of the suffering meted out by the Western powers over the last fourteen years. Now the government and the military are intent on a major escalation in Britian's involvement in the Middle East. Western military action against the Islamic State group has so far been fruitless. But its not just that escalation will not deal with the Islamic State group, it is, in fact, in danger of pushing the whole region into chaos, a chaos which is creating the conditions in which Jihadi groups flourish.
A common response is, 'are you saying we should do nothing?' It is as if politicians are unable to imagine a foreign policy that doesn't involve dropping large amounts of munitions on foreign peoples. There are things that could be done.
Britain could stop arming and supporting the most reactionary, repressive and aggressive regimes in the region for example. We could stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia which is fighting a devestating war against Yemen, and along with Qatar – another key Western ally – funding Jabhat Al-Nusra, the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.
We could end our diplomatic, political and military support for Israel whose persecution of the Palestinian people is one of the great sources of bitterness and dsicontent around the region. These things barely enter the mainstream debate.
In place of rational discussion we are being asked – told in fact – to believe instead that extremism is all about what Muslims do and don't do. Two years ago, public opinion and opposition to war in Britain forced Cameron to recognise that public and parliament were against the war and promised that the government would 'act accordingly'. We now know he was lying. He authorised the bombing anyway. Now, after ignoring its will, he plans to come back to parliament to get endorsement for an escalation of the bombing of Syria, this time on the opposite side.
The anti-war movement in Britain will be mobilising to make sure, once again, that he is stopped.
Chris Nineham is a founder of the UK Stop the War Coalition and author of The People V Tony Blair: Politics, the media and the anti-war movement.
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