165 lines
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165 lines
9.0 KiB
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From timc@2ubh.com Wed Aug 28 10:54:56 2002
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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 09:33:47 +0100
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Subject: [zzzzteana] That wacky imam
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Reply-To: zzzzteana@yahoogroups.com
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http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/comment/0,7493,781769,00.html
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Hamza's horrid - but we must tolerate him
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Rod Liddle
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Wednesday August 28, 2002
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The Guardian
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Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, our maddest of mad mullahs and a cartoon bogeyman
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to scare the kiddies, spent a quiet and contemplative bank holiday playing
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with his own children in Victoria Park, Hackney.
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I've often wondered what incendiary Islamic fundamentalist clerics do on
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statutory public holidays. Head for the beach and maybe swing by B&Q on the
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way home, I had hoped. I had this beguiling vision of Hamza paddling in the
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sea, an ice-cream cone in his one good hand, the waves tickling his shins,
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and the sheikh mentally preparing to fix those pesky shelves in the kitchen
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for once, instead of planning the extermination of Zionism and America and
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maybe me and you, too.
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But B&Q and a day at the seaside is probably beyond Hamza's budget since the
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Bank of England froze his assets, so Victoria Park had to do. But he sounded
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happy enough when I spoke to him, with the babble of tiny, cheerful, Islamic
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proto-warriors in the background.
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You must know Hamza; he's the imam designed, it would seem, by the Daily
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Mail's cartoonist Mac. Large metal hook in place of a left hand. One eye
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covered by a patch, the other a baleful, watchful, milky-white. We don't
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mock the disabled any more these days, unless it's someone like Hamza whom
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we don't like; then, if you'll excuse the inapt phraseology, the gloves come
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off. So Hamza is known (with that vaulting imagination typical of the
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British right) as "Captain Hook", in articles which usually call for his
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arrest, or extradition to the US, or deportation back home to Egypt or maybe
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off to Pakistan or Afghanistan, where he fought the Russians for years and
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thus sustained his disabilities - anywhere, really; just out of here. And if
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we can't lock him up or chuck him out of the country, maybe we can force him
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to shut up.
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Because we don't like Hamza very much. We weren't that fond of him before
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September 11, but afterwards, in that nervy, paranoid few months when we all
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thought the sky might fall in, our disapprobation turned into political
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persecution.
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And now the Daily Mirror is agitating again for his arrest because they've
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got hold of secret videos of the man behaving in an even more inflammatory
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manner, urging warfare on and looting of enemies of Islam. All out of
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context, and a very long time ago, says the imam, not unduly bothered. But
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perhaps he should be, because our reputation for broad-mindedness and
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tolerance towards people like Hamza was thinning even before the Mirror's
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scoop.
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Hamza preaches, or preached, at the scary Finsbury Park Mosque - so, earlier
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this year, the Charity Commissioners banned him from doing so because of his
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allegedly inflammatory remarks. I didn't know Charity Commissioners were
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meant to do stuff like that.
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He has had his passport seized and not returned; his assets have been
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frozen. He is tailed by the police every now and then, and his access to the
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media is restricted by internal policing within broadcasting corporations
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and the press. And this last point is because, we tell ourselves, endlessly
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- repeating the mantra over and over again, and fervently wishing it to be
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true - Hamza is not "representative" of British Muslims, as if British
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Muslims were a simple, homogenous thing with a single voice that one could
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turn to every now and then for explanation. And perhaps succour.
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The trouble is, in the first month or so after the twin towers attack he was
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revealed to be rather more "representative" than the list of those
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government-approved Muslim spokesmen who were - uncomfortably, I suspect -
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dragooned briefly into statements of support for the war against terrorism
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and a blanket condemnation of the Taliban.
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An opinion poll commissioned by Radio 4's Today programme revealed that an
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overwhelming majority of British Muslims were against George Bush's crusade.
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One in six were, to put it mildly, ambivalent about the attack on the US
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(the remainder condemned the attack unequivocally). A large majority thought
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the war against terrorism was a war against Islam.
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Which is what Hamza said, repeatedly. But it was something that, at the
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time, we didn't want to hear. Now, if you quiz the man on present policy at
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home and abroad he comes across - superficially, at least - as someone from
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the liberal left. No war against Iraq; Britain to become independent of US
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foreign policy and attempt rapprochement with Arab states; stronger action
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against Israel; mistrust of global capitalism; redistribution of wealth.
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Nor is he particularly anti-semitic, so far as I can tell, although I don't
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suppose he will be holidaying in Eilat this year. In yesterday's Guardian,
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the chief rabbi expressed a willingness to talk to Hamza and was grateful
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for the sheikh's message of condolence when a London synagogue was attacked.
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Which is not to say that Hamza is a peaceable Jeffersonian democrat who has
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been wilfully misrepresented: he is, without question, rather more
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inflammatory in private sermons to his own people than he is in public. His
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ideology is an arid and uncompromising interpretation of Islam: he would be
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happy, in a truly Islamic society, to stone women to death for adultery, for
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example. You and I would find many - perhaps most - of his views utterly
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repellent.
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And that's the point. Because Hamza is the true test of our apparent desire
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to be multicultural. Multiculturalism is not, surely, the cheerful
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appropriation of bits of inoffensive minority cultural behaviour by the
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ruling hegemony. That is a sort of syncopated monoculturalism.
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Multiculturalism is, rather, the ability of society to tolerate views that
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are antithetical to the dominant culture - and maybe learn from them.
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The FBI has been investigating Hamza, but, of course, has found nothing
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remotely incriminating. The real reason for his vilification and persecution
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is simply the pungency of his views.
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It is often said that we should shut him up or arrest him because his
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rhetoric increases hostility against the Muslim population generally. This
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is a perfectly noble argument, but it does not wash.
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You don't defuse a difficult situation by pretending it doesn't exist. And
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if British Muslims - maybe a minority, maybe not - feel a growing sense of
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unease or mystification at the direction of western foreign policy, it is
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not because they have been led in that direction by Hamza. Shutting the man
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up, therefore, won't make a difference.
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It is rather as Louis MacNeice had it:
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The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever.
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But if you break the bloody glass, you won't hold up the weather.
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