Over the past few days, things have really heated up in the UK over the latest from Martin Bright. For those of you who don’t know Martin, from the the New Statesman, has been relentless in his focus on the relationship between the West and Islam and has done a number of fascinating reports. His latest work focuses on an exploding theme — “Who speaks for the Muslims” — with the government.
Policy exchange has launched an accompanying pamphlet to go along with the program that is to be shown tomorrow. In this pamphlet, confidential documents have been leaked from the foreign office which shows there is a trend from the government to portray people like Sayeedi as Mainstream Muslims. However, Bright in his intro aptly points out how his party only has 6% of the popular vote in Bangladesh. So is the foreign office of Tony Blair infiltrated with some one from inside the radical wing of Islam?

While he focuses on someone from the government deliberately engaging with the radical Muslims, the bigger issue among the Muslim community is how much longer we will tolerate the likes of Delwar Hossain Sayeedi represent Muslims in the UK. While it doesn’t help that the UK government is repeatedly allowing these extremists to preach to the UK muslims in the hope of engaging with them, it also does not help that we, the progressive Muslims, don’t provide an attractive alternative to the young populace of East London.

Researcher Delwar Hossain (no relation to the Maulana), in his new article does a fantastic job in profiling the rise of this brand of Islamism in East London and how the progressive force is failing to capture the hearts and minds of the younger generation.

The battle is an unequal one: the secular effort is faltering against the vibrancy and energy of the Islamists. One of the trust’s primary objectives is to bring collaborators in the liberation war, some of whom live in Britain, to justice. For many young people in deprived Tower Hamlets, this is ancient history with no relevance to their lives: they regard Bangladeshi politics as distant and corrupt, and day-to-day issues of drugs, gangs and unemployment as far more relevant.

The Islamists, by contrast, are sophisticated and up-to-date in their focus and appeal. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre [LMC]) shares the ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami. The mosque is no fringe organisation; it was at the centre of the campaign that helped elect the local Respect party candidate and vocal critic of Britain’s New Labour government, George Galloway, in the 2005 general election.

In this article Delwar Hossain presents a nice parallel in how political parties both in Bangladesh and the UK are using the Jamate Islami tiger to win new votes — but potentially at a very high cost of creating new radicals all around.

SayeediFor this week though keep the focus on the unfolding Sayeedi affair , . Over the past one year, the home office in the UK has gotten specific requests to ban Sayeedi from preaching words of hatred inside the UK. The documents inside this pamphlet (document 7, page 58) will show you how it was resisted claiming that Sayeedi represents mainstream Muslims and is a victim of internal political bickering. Now as per Martin’s blog, the UK government is repeatedly asking channel 4 to censor the Sayeedi portion from the prorgram and has refused to admit whether Sayeedi has been granted visa in the country since July 2005. Well, as it turns out, they have. Sayeedi is scheduled to speak at the East London mosque this weekend — just one day after the program is being broadcast.