We don’t really do bad-mouthing of religion in Britain. Unless we’re at the Oxford Union, of course. Otherwise, that’s just not our way. We leave that to the French. That’s their shtick, and by Jove, they do it remarkably well. To our credit, we are a pretty tolerant bunch. We don’t mind eccentricity. As long as it doesn’t bother us. And even if it does bother us, we’d rather not say a word, at least publicly. We might grumble at home or whine on a mum’s chatroom on Facebook, but, on the whole, taciturnity is our virtue. That’s the good ol’ British reserve!
I did not watch the pugnacious battle of the titans at the Oxford Union debate, aside from a few clips here and there. From what I saw, I understand entirely where those arguing for the motion that “The West is right to be suspicious of Islam” are coming from. Only a few years ago, I would have been on their side. Indeed, it cannot be denied that they articulated many critical truths, and they must be commended for their bravery in stating what needs to be stated.
Yet where I part from the proposition is not over the issues they addressed but the fact they targeted, albeit unwittingly, the very people we need to resist the scourge of Islamism – in short, our liberal Muslim voices.
Before we go further, we must begin on a note of honest reflection. We have a major crisis within, not of, Islam in Britain, Western Europe, and beyond. We hear all the time about the need to “fight Islamist extremism”, invariably couched in a glorious sentence or two about the far-right.
In treating these forces with the same level of suspicion, however, we obscure the very seriousness of the situation we face on the ground, from London to Paris, Malmö to Berlin. While both are doubtless totalitarian, not to mention violent, antisemitic, hostile, and then some, Islamism is leagues ahead of nasty trolls on X simping for Hitler and Holocaust denial.
As I write these words, and as you read them, what we see in sections of our Muslim communities is what I described as “Islamism beyond Islamists”, or the normalisation of Islamist thinking, ideas so antithetical to Western democratic values, particularly on the rights of Jews and other minorities, that while this is an extremist ideology, we don’t really have a problem of extremism. The sad truth is that in certain sections of our Muslim communities the standard itself has become anti-Jewish and opposed to many of the values which define liberal, secular and democratic Western Europe.
There is a lot of data that speaks to this and one study, following October 7, is particularly arresting. Commissioned by the Henry Jackson Society, and undertaken by JL Partners, it revealed, among other chilling facts, that almost half of British Muslims believe that Jews have too much influence over British government policy, British Muslims are more likely to have a positive than a negative view of Hamas, almost half of British Muslims believe that Jews have too much power, 32 per cent of British Muslims are in favour of implementing Sharia law (and the same number believe in the declaration of Islam as the national religion), and most troubling of all, views that are extreme are more likely to be found among the youngest age cohort of 18 to 34, among graduates, and among British-born rather than foreign-born Muslims.
What some might say, if only to assuage widely held concerns, is that those who express such beliefs are extremists. Islamists, if we are lucky. But the truth is a lot more troubling. What we see is the banality of causal, everyday antisemitism and anti-Westernism, in which people from these communities who are ordinary, sublimely ordinary, express such rhetoric that it no longer is something remarkable or shocking. This matters because it lays, and has laid, the fertile ground from which a small violent few have bloomed.
Short of emphatic statements, governments have not done anything to recognise the lethality of an everyday lexicon that has become all too routine and regular. This is why what we see is less a crisis of policy, and more a crisis of culture and society. How do we, after all, tackle dangerous attitudes that are being shared as unremarkably as an enquiry about the weather or weekend plans? So urgent is this question, few politicians, if any, dare to even ask it.
Yet, for all our rather lachrymose admissions, this does not mean that Islam, a diverse religion, is the source at which our ire ought to be aimed. What, for that matter, even is Islam? Yes, no doubt there are theological fundamentals of Islamic faith which all sects and cultures share, but the variations between Muslims, even from within the same background, are crucial. That is why we do not have a Muslim community. We have communities, in which people from all beliefs exist and express themselves.
Before I joined the Association of British Muslims, the oldest Muslim organisation in the country, where I had a voluntary role as the Head of Research and Policy, I was a Jew who thought about Islam in very essentialist terms. I thought Islam could only mean one thing. And it wasn’t very positive.
But, when I was on a short fellowship with experts at Oxford back in 2022, I met devout Muslims who were fighting the evils of antisemitism and anti-democratic thinking in their communities, not despite, but in the name of their faith. I was struck by their courage. Awed, even. They spoke more pitilessly than any Jewish leader I have ever encountered about the seriousness of these problems. Granted, this is a minority, and they are, at least in Britain, a dwindling group. But they revealed to me something which at the time I never considered. To believe that Islam can only have one interpretation, and one that is seemingly anti-Western, is to side with the very people we must all defeat.
This was the great error of the proposition at the Oxford Union (if only they had read this article!). They did not just alienate those Muslims, devout and secular, that are fighting anti-Western ideas in their communities. Worse, they allied themselves to those who claim Islam is irreconcilable with democratic values.
Despite appearances, Islamists do not really regard people of this view as their opposition. Au contraire, such voices are to Islamists what the left are to Islamists: the people who deny, regardless of their intention, the heterogeneity that is so conspicuous within Muslim societies. The real wound to the heart of the fanatic is thus not to claim that a religion of around two billion people is reason for the West to be suspicious. It is to rediscover the power of pluralism. It is for us, believers in the virtue of secular democracy, to offer our wholehearted solidarity with Muslim voices working to advance democratic values in their own communities.
These are not issues that will be resolved in a simple shift in policy. The substantive change has to emerge in the battleground of ideas. The paradigm at present is dominated by those who either deny there is even an issue, let alone a crisis, or those who believe that Islam as such is the reason we find ourselves in such a mess. That paradigm needs to be shaken up.
Yes, we must reject the absurd liberal narratives that Islamism is a mere reaction to poverty and discrimination. Yes, it is to reject the misguided term of Islamophobia, and the use to which extremists and well-intentioned put it, particularly in stifling important conversations. Yes, it is to be honest about the worrying realities. Yes, indeed, we need to be a lot more than just merely suspicious of Islamism. We need to be alarmed and act with tenacious determination to defend what we stand for and declare, without apology or regret, what we stand against.
Yet it is to say with undeniable conviction that we believe not in reformation, but the necessity of amplification. We believe in enhancing Muslim voices, both at home and overseas, working for change, brave and underfunded, threatened and vilified, who need the comradeship of their liberal allies. The left may have abandoned them to the fanatics. But we must not make the same mistake. For we will not make any meaningful change to the crisis of Islamism without our wholehearted solidarity with those who can make a difference. This is a struggle for the soul of secular liberal democracy. And so, this must be a struggle for the soul of a pluralistic Islam.
Harry Saul Markham is the author of ‘The Melted Pot: Diversity, Antisemitism, and the Limits of Tolerance’
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