ties that bind - sep 11

Ties that Bind
299 Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of
Modern Written Arabic, (Beirut,
1980) p.833 and p.1100; or see al-
Mawrid (English/Arabic and
Arabic/English) dictionary
300 Author interview with Ann
Mayer, March 2008.
301 Parliamentary Debates,
House of Commons, April 8, 1986,
vol.95 columns 19-26
302 Henry Patterson, Ireland since
1939: The Persistence of Conflict
(Dublin, 2006), pp. 3-4
303 Ibid.
304 http://www.jamestown.org/
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66 | policyexchange.org.uk
Arabic-English dictionaries, Hans Wehr’s A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, gives its
meaning as ‘devotion and disavowal’ for the sake of God. 299
Just as the modern understanding of an ummah consciousness has become
inherently political, so too have the ideas relating to the concept of al-Walaa
wal-Baraa. It has enabled extremists to declare other Muslims heretics – crucially,
not on the basis of doctrinal belief, but solely on political orientation or action.
The process by which those Muslims who are deemed to have fallen outside the
faith are condemned is known as takfir.
This doctrine has made the boundaries of modern Islam – and the associated
issue of what actions constitute apostasy – inherently political. Indeed, Professor
Ann Mayer, an expert in Middle East and Human Rights law at Pennsylvania
University, told me that the issue of apostasy in Islam has become more prevalent
now than at any other time in its history, largely due to the political context in
which Islam finds itself today. 300
There are some parallels here with the ostracisation of Roman Catholics serving
in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR),
after nationalists successfully painted an image of the RUC as ‘a Protestant force
for a Protestant people’. 301 The campaign to undermine Catholic support for the
RUC was highly effective, ensuring they remained under-represented – often
limited to around just 12 percent of the overall force. 302 Indeed, Henry Patterson,
a politics professor at the University of Ulster, says Catholic representation in the
rank-and-file reached a high watermark at 13.7 percent before declining
consistently from the 1950s onwards. 303 Today, it could be said that for some
Muslims the British armed forces are seen in equally simplistic and misleading
terms: ‘a Crusader force for a Christian people’.
‘War on Islam’
Some Islamist leaders have portrayed Western actions since 9/11 as a ‘War on
Islam’ – making it hard for Muslims to support British military activity in places
like Afghanistan and Iraq.
This view is sometimes espoused by those with a vested interest in keeping
Muslims separate from the wider society – thereby allowing them to exert greater
control over these parallel and semi-autonomous communal clusters. For
example, Hizb ut Tahrir, which campaigns for a puritanical Islamic theocracy, has
been at the forefront of efforts to promote a skewed interpretation of British
military objectives post-9/11. In 2004 its then leader, Jalaluddin Patel, told the
Jamestown Foundation:
...the declaration of [the] “War on Terror” by America which is in reality a cover for a war on
Islam and Muslims. After 9/11 America invaded two Muslim countries and imposed its own
sovereignty on these countries through the might of its military. America has been working hard
to remove any semblance of political Islam. The Americans have put forward policy initiatives
that engage with Muslims at one level but only in a way that dilutes Islam and reduces the
Islamic ideology to a mere religion that is compatible with Western capitalism. 304
Western action is consequently reduced to a neo-imperialist venture, a new
‘civilising mission’ for a new century which seeks to subjugate Islam. Patel’s
reasoning draws support away from the armed forces and creates a culture of