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
t