COMPLETE ARTICLES

The battle of our lives, Sun Leader

OSAMA bin Laden wants a Holy War. His primary aim is to destroy the United States - and its Allies. A few suicide attackers were able to destroy New York's Twin Towers, part of the Pentagon and wipe out 4,629 innocent lives. Imagine, he fantasises, what the world's Muslims could do to the West in full-scale war.

If every Muslim - or even a decent percentage - in every town in Britain went to war we would see bloodshed like never before. A disaster of almost unparalleled proportions would overtake us.

Against that background we read that 40 per cent of British Muslims agree that bin Laden is "justified in any way to mount his war against the United States." The poll also shows 68 per cent quizzed thought they were Muslims first, before being British.

For The Sun, which has argued strongly that Islam is not an evil religion, the survey at first made depressing reading. Yet, on reflection, can it be the case that four out of ten Muslims want to kill
us? Do they lurk in every corner? Are some of our cities awash with blood?

No, no and no.

There is a difference between surveys and bombing - especially when many Muslims feel threatened, scared and powerless. And if churchgoers were asked after evensong if they were "British or Christian" first - might they not say Christian?

The Sun refuses to accept that British Muslims are intent on destroying their country. Some are - but so are some "Christian" fundamentalists called the Real IRA, who on Saturday set off a bomb in Birmingham. If we brand Muslims our enemies, they will become our enemies.

If we put up the shutters, the shutters become a symbol of war. But if we do as Tony Blair does - and reach out in friendship to Muslims - we have a chance. We must fight intolerance on the margin - on both sides. For if we lose now, we will lose lives on the streets of Britain.

'UK Muslims set to fight British troops',Daliy Mail

British Muslim who has travelled to Pakistan to support the Taliban has claimed there are more than 600 other Britons in the region backing the regime. And Hassan Butt, 21, from Manchester, said he and other British Muslims would have no qualms whatsoever about killing British soldiers if they were deployed in Afghanistan.

He said most of the Britons were in Mujhadeen training camps in Afghanistan, preparing for the deployment of coalition forces. The former Wolverhampton University student was pictured on Sky News at a rally in Lahore, barking into a loudspeaker: "I urge you to wake up and realise this is not a war against the Taliban. It's a war against Islam." Bearded Mr Butt, who is allegedly a leader of London-based Al-Muhajiroun - a radical Islamic group committed to jihad - insisted that his only loyalty was to Islam and fellow Muslims, not to the British Government.

He was joined by a second Briton who called himself Abdul, but refused to give his real name. Abdul said he was a convert to Islam from Christianity and he too vowed to fight against coalition forces in the event of a ground war.

Archbishop backs Afghanistan air strikes campaign, Daily Mail

The Archbishop of Canterbury has backed the military action in Afghanistan, saying the strikes should not be seen as a religious war but as an "issue of justice".

Dr George Carey said yesterday at the end of a three-day visit to Bahrain, that Christians and Muslims regarded the September 11 attacks as "terrible, atrocious acts of violence". He stressed that Christians and Muslims must find a way to live together in harmony or face a bleak future. He said: "If we fall into that trap of making it appear to be a religious war, this will end up with further innocent lives being lost.

"It is quite important we find ways in which those who have committed such crimes are brought to justice," he said, referring to the terrorists responsible. Dr Carey had earlier addressed about 200 people, mostly foreigners, at a cultural centre devoted to manuscripts of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and Islamic artifacts.

He also held talks with Bahrain's leader, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in which they discussed the conflict in Afghanistan. Dr Carey said he hoped the US-British attacks in Afghanistan would be "targeted and as brief as possible". His speech was warmly applauded, but some members of
the audience were critical.

"You want to do injustice to bring justice?" Islamic educationist Ishaq Koohegi said. "This is absolutely unbelievable when it is coming from such a high-ranking Christian religious leader. "He speaks like a
politician and approves of what is going on and what is hurting Islam and Muslims," added Koohegi, who runs Discover Islam, a Bahraini group that offers courses in Muslim education.

Dr Carey condemned the massacre of members of the congregation and a guard at St Dominic's Church in Bahawalpur, Pakistan by gunmen last Sunday. He said: "The murder of people simply because they belong to a different religion from that of the majority is a shocking crime against a minority faith." But he said that he knew that the majority of Muslims also condemned the act and called on them to speak out for minority Christians.

Dr Carey said: "From Indonesia, through to Pakistan, northern Nigeria, Sudan and elsewhere Christians are more vulnerable than they have perhaps ever been. Their faith is precious to them but so is their
country. "They need their Muslim brothers and sisters to speak up for them and, when extremists threaten, they need support and friendship."

He spoke of the common elements in the two faiths. "Alongside our shared umanity, spiritual quest and capacity for friendship I would also place our common longings for peace, acceptance and love." Dr Carey said it was wrong to equate Islam with some of the policies seen recently in Afghanistan, including the repressive measures against women. "But because faith gets mixed up with other ideological and political influences, religious understanding and perception becomes distorted. We
must challenge these distortions and never settle for simplistic cultural or religious stereotypes.

He admitted that some Christians had concerns about words like "Jihad" and theologies which lead young Muslims to kill others as well as themselves with the promise of paradise. But Dr Carey also said there were undoubtedly Christian zealots who troubled Muslims. He said the answer was open dialogue between the faiths, however difficult that might seem. "Christians and Muslims, whether we like it or not, are on a journey together and we live in a world where different faiths jostle
side by side."

Blair pledges tolerance for Muslims, Evening Standard

A pledge signed by Prime Minister Tony Blair committing the Government to religious tolerance of British Muslims is being launched. The document, unveiled to mark the start of Islam Awareness Week, has also been subscribed to by dozens of faith leaders, leading politicians and newspaper editors.

Signatories have promised to work towards better community relations between faith groups and avoid using language of an inflammatory or discriminatory nature. They include Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, editor of the Financial Times Andrew Gowers, editor of The Mirror Piers Morgan, Archbishop of Wales Rowan Williams and Executive Director of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues Rabbi Dr Charles Middleburgh.

The pledge is being launched at a House of Commons reception attended by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes. It will then be distributed throughout faith networks and community groups.

Munir Ahmed, president of the Islamic Society of Britain, said: "The overwhelming majority of Muslims reacted with horror to the events of September 11. "Yet we find our faith attributed to those acts of
violence and our communities blamed for terrorism. "Muslims form an integral part of UK society. Never has it been so important to hold an awareness-raising week that can refute the myths and misunderstandings that surround the Islamic faith and demonstrate to the British public that we are a peace-loving community."

'Now we're losing the war at home', By James Langton

Five weeks into the military strikes on Afghanistan, there are signs that the US press is beginning to lose patience with the Allied campaign. James Langton reports from New York

The thunder from United States Air Force B52s carpet-bombing the Taliban front lines could not drown out a rumble of discontent in the press this weekend over the tactics being used by the US government in the war against international terrorism.

"We're sophisticated; they're crude. We're millennial; they're medieval. We ride B52's; they ride horses. And yet they're outmanoeuvring us," grumbled Maureen Dowd in her column yesterday in the New York Times. Her complaints included the failure of the CIA and FBI to catch either the terrorists behind the destruction of the World Trade Center or those responsible for posting anthrax-contaminated letters. "Our institutions are lumbering as they try to keep up with the simple, supple, clever
paladins of Islam," she notes.

What President Bush needs, she says, is a 21st Century version of the Manhattan project, when the most brilliant scientific minds in the world beat Hitler in the race to built the atomic bomb. On the same page, the critic and social commentator Frank Rich turned his attention to Washington's failure to win the propaganda war. The optimism of the early days of the air war has "now been stricken with the multitude of ways we're losing the war at home," he says.

President Bush's appointment of former Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge as head of homeland security is a "PR gimmick". Mr Rich holds out little hope of an early victory in Afghanistan: "We can only hope that the war there is being executed more effectively than the war here - even as Mr Rumsfeld and his generals now tell us that the Taliban, once expected to implode in days, are proving Viet-Cong-like in their intractabilty." Under the headline Why We Fight - the title of the Frank Capra documentary that rallied the US public behind the Second World War - yesterday's Washington Post gives space to Leon Fuerth, the former national security adviser to Al Gore.

Mr Fuerth warns that "we need to focus our war aims", saying that the White House could endanger America's national security if it fails to root out international terrorists worldwide. The White House, he says, should be prepared to make preemptive strikes against foreign governments providing expertise and materials to terrorist groups. Their governments need to be aware they will "face consequences more swift and more final than economic sanctions", he suggests.

A hawkish tone is also taken by the normally-liberal political magazine, The New Republic. Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor, complains that "the sporadic fusillade being directed at Afghanistan makes the air war above Kosovo look ferocious". Part of the problem, the magazine says, is a reluctance to risk troops by General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in the Middle East. But the uncertainty of tactics can be followed along the chain of command that runs to the White House and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

There is concern at the suffering the air raids are having on the civilian population of Afghanistan in the Los Angeles Times. "What set out to be an American war on terrorism has become a war against Afghanistan," says William Pfaff. "The substitution of Afghanistan for terrorism, or the identification of the one with the other, is not only unjust but diverts US policy from where it was intended to go."

The flood of refugees and civilian deaths from missed targets, along with the destruction of hospitals and Red Cross supply depots, have damaged American in the eyes of world opinion. "There is an increasing disposition towards brute force, and the use of whatever allies are at hand, even if that threatens to leave Afghanistan in chaos and the war on terrorism stranded," he concludes.

An opposite view is taken by the editorial page in the Wall StreetJournal. The carpet bombing by B52s shows "the war is being turned over to the warriors" the paper says. The next stage, it hopes, will be heavier deployment of ground troops to overthrow the Taliban and root out Bin Laden.

We have failed to teach true message, By Ziauddin Sardar, Evening Standard

As British Muslims fight and die for the Taliban, even moderates in their home communities must share responsibility for the zeal of these young men, says Ziauddin Sardar

What motivates young British Muslims to go and fight for the Taliban?
Who is responsible for their willingness to die in a foreign land? Four
have already been killed. If we are to believe the fanatical cult
Al-Muhajiroun, which has been recruiting in Luton and Crawley, scores
more are ready to lay down their life for "al Islam".

Al-Muhajiroun's creed is based explicitly on hatred and violence - in
line with every stripe of fascism the world has ever produced. It calls
for total opposition not only to Christians, Jews, Hindus, secularists
and the West, but also to any Muslim who interprets Islam differently.
As we read on the T-shirt of Yasir Khan, the young man from Crawley
killed in Kabul, he accepted the doctrine of Al-Muhajiroun that "al
Islam" is "the final revelation", "the final message", "the final system
" and "the final conquest".

In its self-righteousness and utter intolerance, this doctrine reflects
that of plenty of other fanatics of our time, from the Simbionese
Liberation Army to the Minutemen, Bader Meinhof and the Red Brigade, the
Provisional IRA, ETA and now al Qaeda. Al-Muhajiroun, and its sister
organisation Hizb-e-Tahrir, are the Muslim Bader Meinhof of Britain.
They share a common seductive thread of simple certainties, a wildly
simplistic view of the world that generates its own amorality.

Impressionable young men of many faiths, who embrace the notion of
victimhood, often look at the world's injustices and say "something must
be done". They look at injustice done to others, the abundant ranks of
the poor and wretched. They allow themselves to be persuaded that the
answer is to inflict their own injustices on others in retaliation. In
their uncompassionate compassion, they take up their cause on behalf of
and in the name of God, the oppressed, the working classes, or whomever.

So we should not be surprised that these young Muslim fanatics see the
West's "war against terrorism" as a war against Islam. If you believe
that the world is divided only into "the abode of Islam" and "the abode
of infidels", there is little room for argument. The rest of the world
is against you by definition. Relative ethics and morality are
irrelevant. The forces gathering under the bombing in Afghanistan are
confident that they are engaged in a war with the West, and that the
West is pursuing a campaign against Islam. Disgruntled Muslim youth,
strong on emotion and gut reaction, eager to "serve Islam", is handed a
ready-made cause.

I challenge anyone of my generation who ever pinned a poster of Che
Guevara on his bedroom wall to deny the resonance of this impulse. It is
the lure of a simple view about responsibility for all injustice,
corruption and disparities of power and wealth. We, the majority of
mature, peaceful democrats, think we have learnt that such utopian
idealism is not quite so straightforward. But we should not deny its
seductiveness.

But - and the "but" is important - the young Muslims whose simple
puritanism leads them to take up arms on behalf of the Taliban are not
alone. It is not only the fanatics and madmen who goad them to their
deaths. There are many siren voices, comfortable Muslim armchair
warriors of all kinds.

In Western society, prejudice and ignorant distortion aimed at Islam
abounds. Young Muslims' dissatisfaction is fuelled by racism, social
exclusion and marginalisation, little-Englander jingoism that fulminates
against immigrants and asylum seekers. Politicians such as William Hague
incite anti-Muslim sentiment.

And the moderate Muslim community must bear its own share of
responsibility. We tell our children that Islam stands for peace and
submission. But what are we teaching them, in Muslim Sunday schools
across the land? An absurd list of do's and don'ts, most of which make
little sense in contemporary Britain.

Our kids learn to memorise the Koran parrot-fashion, without any
appreciation of its message or spirit. We teach the story of Prophet
Muhammad as though this had been a lifelong military campaign. In
reality, the Prophet spent less than a week at war, and 23 years seeking
to build a community dedicated to justice, tolerance and moral endeavour
for human betterment. The Islam we teach our kids is stripped to pious
bare bones, denied its cultural elegance. It is reduced to a strident,
militant call to remake the whole world in simple faith and total
opposition to everyone who resists this impossible vision.

Those who seek to take up arms against the West are guilty and culpable,
deluded, misguided and wrong. But a crescendo of impotent Muslim fury
speeds these lads on their way to the front. All Muslims, by acquiescing
in emotive rhetoric, in some degree share responsibility for raising
young men who would rather kill and die than live with the real world
with all its moral doubts and uncertainties, its intractable
constraints. We share blame, because we fail our young people by not
offering them a better way.

Most moderate Muslims share with the militants a dream of a utopian
"Islamic state" where all wrongs are corrected by divine providence.
Instead, we should be teaching our young that flawed humanity must do
its best by its own imperfect efforts, peacefully to achieve some
approximation of what is right and just. In that task, the contemporary
"Islamic states" present us with salutary cautionary tales.

In autocratic Saudi Arabia and theocratic Iran, there is no distinction
between state and religion. Apostasy and treachery are one. In Iran or
Afghanistan, both earn death by judicial execution. Geoff Hoon, the
Secretary of State for Defence, threatens legal action against those who
fight for the Taliban, then seek to return to Britain. By their own
reductive notions of Islam, a far worse fate awaits them if they survive
US bombing.

* Ziauddin Sardar's Introducing Islam is published by Icon Books, £9.99.

LOSERS IN PATRIOT GAME, Tony Parsons, Mirror

IT IS difficult to know what we should do about the young British
Muslims who want to fight for the Taliban. Charge them with treason, or
have a whip-round to help them on their way? Although we should be
careful talking about a whip-round. In the UK, a whip-round means
raising a few bob for some worthy cause. But in Afghanistan, having a
whip-round means your granny has been caught outside the house
unaccompanied by a man.

It is very revealing that the first British casualties in the current
conflict are Muslims killed fighting for the enemy. Talk of charging
young British Muslims with treason is pointless. The last thing we need
is an Bobby Sands, dying for the cause in his cell. If these nutters
from Luton, Leicester, Birmingham and Ilford want to fight for the
Taliban, then let them go. Like the Oxbridge-educated British toffs who
spied for the Russians in the middle of the last century, they will
eventually discover that the system they adore looks nowhere near so
good in close-up. The Taliban torture their fellow citizens for playing
chess. They flog women who show a centimetre of skin or leave their
prison - sorry, home - without a man. They have banned such decadent
pursuits as flying kites and whistling.

The widows of Afghan war heroes are forced to beg for food. Women are
forbidden from being educated. Sports arenas are for public executions.
Or put it another way, lads, it's even worse than living in Luton. "We
see ourselves as Muslims above everything else," says Mohammed of East
London, a 24-year-old father of two. "We're not British Muslims. We're
Muslims living in Britain."

Then get the hell out, pal. You are not wanted here. David Blunkett has
the right idea. He says that immigrants should prove they really want to
be British. The Home Secretary has realised that the only way for a
multi-cultural society to work is if all cultures share core beliefs. It
doesn't matter if you are black, white, yellow or brown. It doesn't
matter if you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Jew. We are all
equally British.

But if you don't feel British, if you do not feel a profound love for
this country, if you do not feel a degree of gratitude for the land that
raised you, educated you and cared for you, then you are better off
somewhere else. What David Blunkett believes is not some asinine
"cricket test" as advocated by Norman Tebbit. It goes much deeper than
that. Blunkett says: "I wouldn't go with the cricket test, but I would
go with the test of whether someone feels they want their children and
their grandchildren to feel and be British."

I don't think many British Muslims will join the Taliban. Most of the
fanatics are all mouth and burqa. And the few who make it will not give
the Royal Marine Commandos too many sleepless nights. The only thing
they are really damaging is our increasingly fragile multi-racial
society. The treasonous babble of the fanatical few reminds us that you
should love the country you live in. And if you can't do that, you
should do the other thing. Go.Islamic

The headscarf, or hijab, is widely seen as a symbol of oppression. But
if it's that simple, why do so many British Muslim women insist on
wearing it - even if their husbands ask them not to? Guardian, Raekha Prasad

Sumaya Shakur was out shopping with her husband and two children in
north London last week when her toddler son got under the feet of a
passing couple. They reacted with a flood of spit and abuse, and told
Shakur: "Go back where you come from." This a journey that would in fact
have taken her to the east end and her husband to the Midlands.

The incident - a first for Sumaya, who is 34 - sparked another round in
a long-running dispute with her husband over her choice of clothing. "He
told me that if I didn't wear the scarf, it wouldn't have happened," she
says. "And he's probably right."

This is not a easy time for Muslim women who choose to cover their
heads: the headscarf has become a red flag to those consumed with hatred
of Islam. Since September 11, there have been reports of headscarves
being ripped off and doused in alcohol, and of a soaring number of women
who wear them being on the receiving end of abuse and violence.

Wearing the headscarf, when the stakes are so high, is a weighty
decision. As a symbol of Islam, the scarf has rarely been as contentious
in Britain as it is now. Perceptions of Muslims - ally or foe, backward
or progressive, insular or interacting - are asserted and contested. And
so long as the denial of women's human rights under the Taliban are,
quite rightly, condemned by British politicians, and the image of
destitute women fully covered in the burka begging on the street appears
daily on our screens, perceptions of the headscarf as suspect and
oppressive will, by subtle association, be heightened in many minds.

Yet, suspicion of the headscarf, or hijab, is not born out of September
11. Neither is the western tendency to isolate the treatment of women to
discredit Islam in its many forms. Rather, the events have garnered
centuries-old western conceptions, and indeed misconceptions, about the
motivations and substance of the women wearing it.

In Shakur's case, her husband believes the scarf gives non-Muslims the
red-light to assume that they are "backward" and that he is oppressing
her. He would prefer that she didn't wear it. "That's his opinion," she
says.

Although the hijab brings women more respect within the Muslim
community, she argues that the decision to wear it in Britain is rarely
without conflict. "I don't find wearing the scarf easy," she says. "But
primarily because of the complexities of having to deal with other
people's reactions and misunderstandings. I've lived on my own for 10
years, been to university, I'm a mother and I work and I'm constantly
juggling all these things. I put off wearing it because at some point I
had to compromise, but I felt really awful about it."

She began wearing the hijab when she was 28, having become interested in
Islam after a secular upbringing by Bangladeshi parents. "It's part of a
holistic view of modesty that is at the core of Islam. It's about me
being answerable to my creator. I understand it as being good to
myself."

Shakur's decision to wear the scarf was further complicated by her
passion for sport. She runs for a club and competes in off-road
marathons and triathlons. Fellow club members, she says, give her "a lot
of stick". "Mostly snidey comments about what my husband makes me do and
questions about why don't I just wear shorts?" Changing in mixed
changing rooms out of a wetsuit into cycling clothes, while keeping her
head covered during the recent London triathlon, she says, is just "the
dynamics I have to deal with".

Among Muslims worldwide, there is little consensus over the rights and
wrongs of wearing the headscarf: the debate is more about whether
they're free to discard it than to choose wearing it. Rebellion and
conformity alike have enlisted its symbolism. It was in the mid-90s that
the French education minister banned "ostentatious religious symbols",
leaving little doubt that it was the headscarf to which he referred. In
France, at that time, there was great anxiety about the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism in Algeria inspiring terrorism in France. Young Muslim
women who didn't wear the scarf protested against the decree by suddenly
donning it.

In Turkey, the struggle for secularism has led to female MPs being
banned from wearing the hijab in parliament, while in Britain, around 50
Kurdish women protested against Britain's involvement in the military
strikes against Afghanistan by ripping off their headscarves and
throwing them through the gates of Downing Street.

In recent years, the British-born daughters of scarf-free mothers, have
increasingly worn the hijab as an affirmation of cultural identity.
"This generation is forging its own way," says Arzu Merali, head of
research at the Islamic human rights commission. "Many young women have
been brought up in a western feminist, educated and secular way. But
then it didn't actually deliver. Wearing the hijab is not saying that
you hate modernity, but that you don't want to be judged for what you
look like."

But in wearing the hijab, a woman is liable to invoke a whole new set of
assumptions about who she is: from being culturally submissive to
terrorist links with terrorism. Yet the woman's perception of herself is
unchanged. "I'm not aware I'm wearing it any more," says Sheila Kureshi,
now in her 30s, who first wore the scarf eight years ago. "It's part of
me."

Kureshi says that the decision to wear the scarf was related to her
growing self-confidence. At university, and while studying for a PhD,
she "wasn't brave enough" to wear the hijab. For several years she
worked in the pharmaceutical industry, where she was the only women in
her team. "It was incredibly sexist. My manager treated me like a
'little woman' and I had to prove myself more than the men. I just
couldn't have worn the scarf in that environment."

So she became a "part-timer", wearing the hijab outside work. When she
decided to leave the commercial world and switch to teaching, she went
to the job interview in the scarf. "I felt that I had compromised for
long enough. I wanted to identify myself as a Muslim. You have to stand
up and be counted."

Even so, walking out of the door wearing the hijab, after September 11,
did make Kureshi feel "extremely vulnerable".

But the recent psychological pressure on women to abandon the scarf has
bolstered a defiant few to take it up. Nadia Ghaffar is one of them. The
attack on America and its assault on Afghanistan have, says the
21-year-old medical student, made her "very aware of being a Muslim".
Following a year of procrastination, the events emboldened her and she
started wearing the hijab four weeks ago.

"I began thinking about why I was a Muslim," she says. "People assume
that if you don't cover, you don't practice your faith, and expect you
to fit in with their views and values."

Friends and colleagues have told her she seems happier. "I feel at ease
with myself, more confident about who I am. I was ready to do this, so I
don't really care what people think of me. I've finally got the strength
to do what I believe in."

· Samayar Shakur is a pseudonym.

Extreme Muslim groups step up recruitment drive, Lee Elliot Major, Guardian Unlimited

The first two months of the academic year has seen a sharp and
concentrated rise in activity from extremist Muslim groups on campus.

According to a report by the National Union of Students, the Al
Muhajiroun group, which has in the past claimed links with both Hamas
and Osama Bin Laden, has been distributing anti-Western literature and
intimidating other Muslim students.

Universities in Manchester, Birmingham, London and Cambridge have been
targeted by the group say the NUS, following a public statement by the
Al Muhajiroun leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, that students would be
recruited by the group.

The NUS banned the extremist group from student unions last year, after
a series of complaints about its intimidating behaviour during fresher
fairs. The NUS report says: "Al Muhajiroun have been distributing
literature of an anti-Western, and sometimes anti-semitic and anti-Sikh
nature, describing the west as "infidels", Jews as "terrorists", and
claiming that Sikh girls are an easy target for conversion to Islam,
because they "like a drink".

"Stalls were operating outside the University of Manchester and
Manchester Metropolitan University on a daily basis during freshers'
period, and have been appearing twice weekly since then. This is clearly
part of a concerted recruitment drive by the group, who have also been
seen at the University of Birmingham. They were also present at Queen
Mary University, from where they were swiftly ejected."

A student at Queen Mary, Mark Ross, said: "This is not the first time
they have been here, and quite frankly, they are terrifying. Not only do
they make Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Homosexual students feel
uncomfortable, they also cause great distress for the union Islamic
Society, who completely distance themselves from Al Muhajiroun, whilst
at the same time fearing reprisals for doing so."

Max Curtis, NUS national executive committee member, and convenor of the
NUS anti-racism campaign, said: "Al Muhajiroun have left us in no doubt
that the decision to ban them from our campuses was right. In the
aftermath of the tragic attacks on America, they have continued to show
themselves to be a vile, racist group.

"NUS is committed to keeping these extremists off our campuses, and to
ensure the well being of all our students, particularly Muslim students.
Groups such as Al Muhajiroun serve only to create racial and religious
tension on campus, and have no place in the student movement."

Clive Gabay, campaigns director at the Union of Jewish Students said:
"Al Muhajiroun have posed a vicious threat to Jewish students for many
years. They have been responsible for causing racial hatred towards
Jewish and minority students. It is only because of the way in which
minority students of all backgrounds and faiths have united to confront
these extremists, that they are as marginalised as they are.

"However, clearly our work is not finished, and together with our
friends in other communities, we will continue to fight organisations
such as these as long as they exist in our society. This cannot,
however, be a singular battle - the Home Secretary must act to guarantee
the rights of Jewish and minority students."

The recruitment of students to extremist Islamic groups has come under
increasing scrutiny since the September 11 attacks.

The US government is introducing a tracking system that will give police
information about the names of some 500,000 overseas students in US
universities, after it was reported that one of the September 11
hijackers entered the US on a student visa. Some of the hijackers also
studied at Hambury University.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: We British Muslims must reclaim our faith from the fanatics, Independent

'Let us ask how Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists or Jews retain their faiths
without bullying the nation'

For the past few years, well intentioned Muslims have backed an annual
Islam Awareness week to disseminate positive images of Muslims in this
country. Like Black History Month, the aim is not to be too
controversial but to inform and educate those who are wilfully or
otherwise ignorant about the faith at its best and its millions of
blameless followers - a PR exercise and one that was felt to be
necessary because of mounting Islamaphobia.

This week it is upon us again, but in the choppy, howling world we
suddenly find ourselves in today, the original good-news agenda appears
tawdry, self-deluding and inappropriate. A tea party in the trenches is
not a good idea.

Polite discourse on the nobility of Islam will do nothing to stem the
sickening racial prejudices that are re-emerging with a vengeance.
Bigoted white Britons (of all classes) now think they have right on
their side and so they crush and demean Asian Britons because
brown-skinned people are all damned Pakis who support terrorism that
kills their sweet American brothers and sisters.

Do-good platitudes will not discourage alarmist reports in the media,
now possessed by fears of enemies within, real and imagined. Yesterday a
newspaper claimed that its poll of 1,170 Muslims (the first such survey
to date) showed one in 10 Muslims approved of the attacks in the US and
40 per cent backed bin Laden. We are not told precisely where this
"random" sample was carried out, and there is obviously a lot of scope
to prejudice results by choosing certain sampling points, and the
questions were designed to entrap. But my English mother-in-law and her
neighbours in Sussex will not know that, will they, as they read this
paper of authority?

Those frantic suddenly to know the truths about Islam don't need this
awareness week, either. My dears, you can't take a teeny step in any
direction in our press these days without being accosted by learned
white journalists delivering detailed sermons on the Koran (Blair and
Straw are also experts on this suddenly) or on various manifestations of
Islam and ever more obscure cults and charismatic leaders. Thanks to
these newest of Islamic scholars, I have discovered Deobandic Islam in
India that forbids the use of chairs and Sayyid Qutb, "the father of
modern Islamic fundamentalism", an Egyptian whose loathing of the West
was triggered by a drunk American woman who tried to seduce him on a
liner in 1948. So all this is her fault then!

Or it could be Wahhabism, the uncompromising form of Islam that
dominates in Saudi Arabia and that has been successfully exported all
over the world. I even learnt that, until recently, Muslims could openly
(not secretly, like some do now) drink alcohol and that many traditional
medicine books recommended wine. With so much information sloshing
about, why waste the week on awareness-raising?

It is impossible today not to feel that a little less "Islamic
awareness" would be a very good thing for those al-Morons who daily
pronounce on the evil that is the West and who call upon all Muslims to
fight for the Taliban, whose exemplary Islam has destroyed one half of
Afghanistan's population - the mothers, sisters, wives and daughters -
and incarcerated them in the world's first mobile prisons.

They didn't go to fight the Serbs when the Muslims of Kosovo and Bosnia
needed all the help that they could get. No, because those European
Muslims represented modernity and cosmopolitanism, not the barbarism
that calls itself Islam and is on the ascendancy today not only in
Lahore and in Kabul but also in Bradford and in Birmingham.

We British Muslims, with all our diversities and conflicts, are more in
crisis today than ever. The fanatics have taken over the asylum, and
quiet moderation may no longer be enough to reclaim the faith. Time now
for the brave among us to say that we do not wish to be united with the
extremists just because they are Muslims. Name them please, the mullahs
in mosques, the Muslim and non-Muslim local and national politicians who
have in part created the monstrous men we see on the streets who want
the Taliban in Westminster.

Let us reflect, too, on how this crisis is affecting other visible
groups and, indeed, ask how Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jews, Bahais and
Jehovah's Witnesses manage to retain their faiths without bullying this
nation? They too face discrimination and fear assimilation. But they see
themselves as part of a Western democracy, not against it and against
everyone else.

In recent years, too many young British Muslims have rejected
anti-racist groups and other communities in the name of their superior
Islam. They write to me mostly to tell me that I identify too much with
Asians or blacks. True. My Islamic identity is above all humanistic.
This is the message that Islam Awareness week could usefully try and
impart to the too many xenophobic Muslims we have around us today.

We might also begin more open discussions about the forced marriages (a
new government report this Tuesday will show how many of these are found
mostly among British Muslims), drugs and degeneracy that are destroying
Muslim family life. Women and men are running away because they cannot
surrender their free will to cruel authoritarian elders.

This awareness week needs also to launch more media rebuttal networks -
we already have some very good ones that are making an impact. We must
imprint on the national consciousness the complex views held by moderate
Western Muslims about the war. Most want the bombings stopped
immediately because we are killing innocents who have suffered enough.
They abhor bin Laden and extremists and those (whoever they are, because
I am not sure I know) responsible for the carnage in the US.

They do not trust the US government to do what is right and resent the
rhetoric of Western political leaders, which implies that American lives
are infinitely more valuable (so we must remember them and evoke them in
our hearts) than all those Afghans we are killing and than those Iraqis
who are now abandoning their babies because they cannot bear to watch
them die for lack of medicines and other basics. Such a radical agenda
would make the awareness week make sense. Otherwise I can't see the
point.

<mailto:y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk>

To Give In Now Would Mean Chaos, By Ann Treneman

Clare Short Is Known For Her Stand Against Landmines. But She Supports
The Bombing Of Afghanistan - Which Includes Cluster Bombs - Because It
Gives The Country's People A Better Future

On September 11 Clare Short was on her way to the TUC dinner in Brighton
when she heard the news from America. The Secretary of State for
International Development turned round, went home and watched
television.

"That night I thought 'This is the destruction of everything I have been
working for and a more just and equitable world. This means the world
will divide into two blocs - but this time it will be hot, not cold -
and it will be so destructive and evil and ugly and hurt everybody'. I
felt very depressed that night."

One bloc would be rich Western countries, the other poor developing
countries, some of them Muslim. That fear, assuaged by the subsequent
weeks of coalition-building, still lurks and forms part of the basis of
her support for the war in Afghanistan and for the launch of a new trade
round this weekend at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Qatar. In
her world view it is all interlinked and morally coded.

"Globalisation has created a vulnerability of rich countries to this
kind of attack. The only way to make the world safe is to look at this
as a whole and to work for more fairer development and more justice for
the great unresolved conflicts. And that is the question: are we big
enough, this generation of us human beings, to grasp that way to safety
which is more just, more fair, more stable?

"And it is the way," she says, "even if you don't care about moral
equality." She says even the billionaires of this world must see this.
"If they want their great-grandchildren to inherit the fruits of their
accumulations, they need to be into international development, otherwise
the chances of their country being safe in the face of poverty and
inequality are very small."

You have been to Gaza, I say, you have seen the poverty there. Surely
that is linked to the Middle East conflict? "Of course I've seen it.
Excuse me. I saw it a long time ago. And I've been trying to say this to
everyone every day of every week since I've been doing this job. Not
everyone did see it. More and more people are realising that we need an
equitable world order, strong world institutions dedicated to fair rules
internationally, and that there are two futures. It is a time of
opportunity when we can move the world forward and make it fairer, or we
will see more bitterness and division, conflict and environmental
degradation, and trouble."

We are talking in her office in the tall thin building on Victoria
Street that houses the Department for International Development. The
lobby is small, perhaps cramped is a more honest assessment, and the
decor dilapidated, which all seems in keeping with the global fight
against poverty. But her office is airy and, in person, the 55-year-old
Secretary of State turns out to be rather grand, elegant and, at times,
imposing. I had thought she would be warm, and she is, but powerful,
too.

"My only thought is, how long are we going to discuss trade?" she
demands, one second after we meet.

Such anxieties are understandable as trade does seems dull next to war
and cluster bombs, but they are very much related. This week, while Tony
Blair is in Washington and the bombs fall on Afghanistan, she will be
preparing for the first test of the world's new moral order: the first
ministerial meeting of the WTO since the debacle in Seattle in 1999.

That ended in failure and violence. Will the same happen this weekend in
Qatar? The antiglobalisation movement says the WTO does not need a new
round of trade talks, but should instead implement the rules that
already exist and thus help poorer countries. Short insists that the
only way forward is for poorer countries to engage in the process and
fight for gains during a new trade round. If they do not, she adds, the
WTO could break up, with cataclysmic results.

I say that the protesters may be violent but they seem to have been
rather effective in getting attention. She is scathing about this.
"Since September 11, we haven't heard from the protesters. I'm sure they
are reflecting on what their demands were because their demands turned
out to be very similar to those of Bin Laden's network. So obviously
they are looking afresh. They say, world trade is evil, we want to stop
it. If he says that, too, do they still want to say that? There is a
sort of anarchist's chaos: the world's unfair, this is hateful, trade is
ugly . . ."

Profit is ugly, I prompt.

"Yes. The protesters are living in very wealthy countries where they
have an advanced market economy and young people have access to all the
fruits of that: the Internet, mobile phones, Nike trainers. They say
profit is horrible, we don't want these developments that we take for
granted to be in developing countries, as it will exploit people. Quite
a complete muddle!" This seemed an appropriate time to bring up the war
and cluster bombs but she is not ready. "But have we finished trade?"
She makes another impassioned pitch for the WTO and a new trade round
and how it can make the world a better, fairer place. She does get
carried away. At one point she says: "Anyone who cares about the next
generation, this is my recommendation to the world!" She laughs at
herself but keeps going until, finally, there is a pause.

So what does she really think of the war? How does she feel about the
civilian deaths? "Terrible. But I also know what has been going on in
Afghanistan. When the Taleban took Kabul, people were killed in vast
numbers. People have been having their hands and feet chopped off. Every
girl was sent home from school, 80 per cent of teachers were women so
all the boys' schools closed.

"I mean, I hate every bomb but I think that what has happened in
Afghanistan - and the way the West used it after the Russian invasion
and then dropped it and the mess we left behind - and we owe them some
kind of decent future. So doing this right also gives the people of
Afghanistan a decent future."

She speaks with conviction and passion, and I cannot believe that she is
merely on-message here. "So what we have to do: life isn't simple. We've
got to do more than one thing at a time. We've got to carry on and use
military force in a focused and careful way, keep bringing humanitarian
aid in and support preparations for a new Afghan government.

"It is not true that if you stop any military activity, the food would
get to everyone. And it would be wrong. You have to do both. It's the
only way, and the Taleban are the cause of all this starvation and mess
that there is in Afghanistan."

Yes, I say, but we in the UK are not in control of the Taleban, we think
that we have some control over our politicians.

"Well, if we were all to stop and go away, there would be mass hunger
and death. Millions, literally millions, would die."

But why not have a pause in the bombing, as called for by the aid
agencies? "All these people say 'I hate bombing, please stop it'. If you
are just a good person, you say, yes, yes, I'm in favour of that. That's
your voice and you are saying to politicians 'Could you stop it,
please?' But if you are sitting in the seat of responsibility, you know
that stopping is irresponsible. I've just been in Africa and various
leaders who have been through Hell in their own countries have been
saying to me that it would be an error to stop. They don't like it
either but giving in would just leave chaos and death."

I tell her that she has a unique role in the War Cabinet, which she
prefers to call the Special Cabinet. Because she has a habit of
following her own convictions - resigning from the front bench over the
Gulf War but supporting the bombing in Kosovo - she is seen as a moral
barometer, a collective conscience.

She points out sharply that this is my assumption, she never asked to be
such a thing. "And, of course, people trust you when they think that you
agree with them. So when I said 'We mustn't lash out' they said that I
was wonderful. And when I said 'No, we musn't pause in the bombing' they
said I was horrible."

Yes, I say, but people think that as long as you are supporting the war,
it must be right.

"I think that it is right. It doesn't mean every single step that has
ever been taken is right. Every error of bombing is wrong and must be
limited. People have got to look at why Afghanistan is in this mess."

What about cluster bombs? Shouldn't there be some limits on the
military? "We should have limits on everything, but . . ."

But aren't you against cluster bombs, which many think are another form
of landmine?

She then tells a story about a man she had just met in Paris who used to
be in the RAF and told her how cluster bombs were used to break up
airfields and the like. "I said 'That is interesting, because we are
having this argument about Afghanistan'. Clearly, if they are being
dropped anywhere that puts people at risk - you know, the whole country
is littered with landmines on top of everything else; my God the tragedy
of Afghanistan is very large - if they are put anywhere that puts at
risk some child coming to collect a food parcel, for example, that would
be unbearable."

She notes that the Taleban may not have many aircraft, "but if they
cannot use the ones they have got, it is a really good thing. Then the
war could end as quickly as possible. And that, surely, is what any
decent person wants."

Well, I say, we all know what does happen with cluster bombs.

"That is my answer. I'm going to get myself more fully briefed, in so
far as I can, about how many there were and where they were dropped. But
that is my answer on cluster bombs. In each issue we have to look at
what is right, how it is being used, what our objectives are, what is
right, what is the speediest and best possible end."

For the first time in the interview, I doubt her conviction. But, as she
noted earlier, that might be my mistake.

Al-Jazeera TV faces ban for inciting hatred, By Sean O'Neill

AL-JAZEERA television could be banned from broadcasting in Britain if
its transmission of Osama bin Laden's latest video statement is judged
to incite racial or religious hatred.

The Independent Television Commission is monitoring al-Jazeera's output
and will today examine the content of bin Laden's weekend video, in
which he urged Muslims to wage religious war on the "infidel". On the
ITC's advice, the Government can proscribe any channel that is guilty of
incitement to hatred.

The Qatar-based Arabic language network has been available free since
August in the six million British homes that subscribe to Sky Digital -
providing a potential audience of 10 million people. Al-Jazeera is
licensed by the French broadcasting authorities, allowing it to screen
its output anywhere in the European Union.

The CIA fears that bin Laden's statements may contain coded messages to
terrorists and Downing Street asked news broadcasters last month to
exercise caution when reporting al-Qa'eda videos.

Short
<http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/02/wbin02
.xml> extracts of bin Laden's latest video were shown with editorial
commentary on BBC, ITN and Sky news programmes. The entire video,
lasting several minutes, was shown on al-Jazeera. In his broadcast, bin
Laden sought to characterise the war on terrorism as a "fundamentally
religious" conflict.

Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, has revealed in a parliamentary
written answer that al-Jazeera's output is being monitored by the ITC to
see if it breaches the EU Television Without Frontiers directive.

That rule requires EU states to "ensure that broadcasts do not contain
any incitement to hatred on grounds of race, sex, religion or
nationality".

Mrs Jowell said: "It is open to the Government, on the advice of the
ITC, to proscribe a television broadcaster which broadcasts from another
member state where the broadcasts contain material which manifestly,
seriously and gravely infringes this prohibition, on at least two
occasions in a 12-month period."

Before this weekend's video broadcast the ITC's "monitoring of
al-Jazeera has not led it to conclude that proscription would be
justified". Sky said it was legally required to allow al-Jazeera to
broadcast and had no power to control its output.

(CNM)