EUROPE’s 20 million Muslims are braced for even tougher times following the devastating terror attacks on London last week and suspicions that the perpetrators of the attacks were four young Muslim men of Pakistani descent.

Despite an unprecedented effort by Islamic leaders and communities across the continent to condemn the bombings and denounce terrorism, many are afraid of a backlash, believing they could be made scapegoats for the terrible acts of a small group of extremists.

British Muslims are especially worried at the chilling discovery that the alleged suicide bombers may have come from their midst. But Islamic communities in all other major European nations are equally concerned they may become the target of mainstream Europeans who, egged on by racist far-right groups, increasingly confuse Islam with terrorism.

Muslim fears focus on both the negative short-term impact of the London tragedy and its even more disastrous longer-term repercussions.

Attacks on Islamic targets and physical assaults on Muslims — the most visible signs of Islamophobia — have been rising in the immediate aftermath of the blasts. Police in Britain confirmed that more than 70 incidents targeting the Muslim community — most of them minor — in a space of a few days following the London attacks.

However, Muslims fear the London bombings will have an even more far-reaching impact on their lives and their future in Europe. Their overarching concern is that tragedy will exacerbate Muslims’ already difficult, uphill struggle to integrate and be recognized as full-fledged citizens of host European nations.

There are justified reasons for such concern. British authorities, anxious to preserve harmony in an increasingly multi-religious and multi-ethnic country, have taken the lead in appealing for unity in the face of the blasts. But many other EU nations have yet to acknowledge either the increasingly diverse nature of their societies or the contribution made by Muslim immigrants to their national prosperity.

Strikingly also, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone out of his way to stress that extremists do not reflect the opinions or actions of the vast peaceful majority of British Muslims, other EU leaders are rarely heard making such comments or distinguishing between Islam and terrorism. The focus across the EU for the moment is on tightening security. Concerns of terrorist acts are particularly acute in Denmark and Italy which have been threatened on an Islamist website for sending troops to Iraq. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has warned that “everyone should be aware that we are exposed, we are all exposed.” Even France and Germany which opposed the Iraq war have moved to a heightened sense of alert.

At a crisis meeting of European Union interior ministers called in the wake of the London tragedy, Britain won pledges of joint EU action to fight terrorism, including promises to introduce a controversial system for storing data on phone calls, text messages and e-mails across the bloc.

The four-page EU declaration also vowed measures to cutoff funding for terrorists, intensify intelligence-sharing and improve exchange of data on lost and stolen explosives. Ministers also promised measures to tackle the “root causes” of political violence.

“There is no one measure that I can propose which can stop terrorism,” said British Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Instead, the focus was on a twin approach which included greater intelligence-gathering to get information on terrorist networks and “efforts to understand and isolate those who focus on extremism including suicide bombers,” Clarke said.

Young Muslim men were in the media and political spotlight even before the London bombs but the events have intensified the debate over the radicalization of Muslim youth in Europe.

British and other European newspapers have stressed what the Financial Times called the “chilling challenge of home-grown jihadis,” men who were born and grew up in middle class comfort in Britain, but were drawn to extremist ideologies. This is unlike the Arab-born terrorists who flew aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001 or North African immigrants believed to have detonated bombs on Spanish trains in March 2004.

Security experts quoted in British papers point out that while the focus of western intelligence services in the wake of September 11 was first on terrorist cells made up of jihadis with fighting experience in Afghanistan, the concern currently has shifted to younger men and boys who came to Europe at a very young age or were born and bred there as children of immigrant families.

Analysts cite many factors behind the radicalization of young Muslim men including hostility towards Islam following 9/11, outrage over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, continuing violence against Palestinians and the continuing human rights disgrace of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Anger at facing constant discrimination when trying to find jobs and housing is also often cited as factors driving disaffected young Muslims into extremist networks.

Olivier Roy, a French expert on Islamist groups and author of Globalized Islam, told the Financial Times that today’s radical Muslims were, above all, culturally alienated and unable to cope with a globalizing world. “They are not trying to build a political organization. They want to do something spectacular,” Roy underlined.

The Sunday Times warned, meanwhile, that Al Qaeda is recruiting affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges to carry out terrorist attacks in Britain. The paper said that a joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier prepared for Mr Blair warned that as a result of this recruitment drive, Britain may be harbouring thousands of Al Qaeda sympathizers. Anger over the Iraq war was speeding up the process of Muslim radicalization, the report cautioned.

But many newspapers noted that the devastation caused by the London terrorists had also killed and injured many Muslims. The focus of many reports has been on a 20-year-old Muslim woman, Shahara Akther Islam, who is among the missing and was believed to have been aboard the Circle Line subway train when it exploded.

For many reporters, the smiling young woman, pictured in a pale blue scarf and top, embodies, the callous attack’s victims: Londoners, Muslims, daughters, ordinary people off to work, the happy face of the cosmopolitan city.

“It seems an unspeakably cruel fate for a young woman who could have been a poster girl for British Muslims today,” The Independent newspaper said recently. “Shahara embodies as much as anyone multicultural Britain and the way in which younger generations of Muslims are embracing both their own and western cultures,” the paper said.

It added that the slaughter of a young British Muslim woman would provide “proof” for the British public that the unseen enemy is indiscriminate in its violence but additionally show that the killers are not just targeting the non-Muslim majority.

The Sun tabloid printed her picture on its front page alongside one of Laura Webb, 29, who also left for work Thursday and never arrived. “Two beautiful, decent women. One Christian. One Muslim. Both missing with dozens more. Pray for them all,” Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper urged.

Tensions between Muslims and host communities definitely worsened after 9/11 and even further after the Madrid bombings. Last year’s passionate debate in France over young Muslim girls being allowed to wear headscarves to schools spotlighted the French governments’ unease at the rising confidence of their Muslim community.

One key problem facing Muslims seeking to practise their faith in Europe is that they live in increasingly secular European societies, with church attendance on the decline. So, the Muslims who practise their religion in public — and dress differently — are highly visible and noticed.

Second, unlike the Muslims who immigrated to the US and Canada, many Muslims in Europe came to the continent in 1960s and 1970s as labourers. Although many have since then climbed up the social ladder, the majority remain part of a poor underclass and still live on the margins of mainstream European society.

The increasingly emotional debate in Europe over Turkey’s planned membership of the EU — negotiations are expected to begin in October — is another reflection of this continued European unease in dealing with Islam. Ironically, those engaging in such anti-Islamic vitriolic forget that an ageing Europe is in desperate need of young immigrants to turn the continent’s economic wheels. Inevitably, those coming to Europe will be Muslims from Asia and North Africa.

Integration is a two-way street, however. Many Muslims are also retreating into a closed view of their host societies and the older generation has done little to curb the rising extremism of Muslim youth. Tony Blair and Prince Charles have insisted that Muslim communities representing the “moderate and true voice of Islam” must do more to isolate the extremists in their midst.

The London bombings could aggravate such alienation and widen the gulf between Muslim Europeans and others even further. But if politicians, the media and Muslim leaders conduct themselves in a responsible manner, they can limit the immediate and the long-term impact of the tragedy on relations between Europe’s different communities. By doing so, they can prove that diversity in Europe is a source of strength, not a weakness.

BRITISH rule in America was a whole lot milder than it was in India and other places where people of colour formed the great bulk of the population. Here the local people had their own elected legislatures and town councils, and they filled most of the positions in the public services.

The British government appointed the governor in each of the 13 colonies. He called the colonial assembly to session and prorogued it. Acting for the king, he could veto the bills it had passed. Parliament made laws for the colonies and levied taxes, albeit, sparingly. It would be fair to say that the colonies were self-governing for the most part.

By the middle of the 18th century, education had spread much more in America than it had in the “mother country.” Many an American farmer read newspapers; many more of the landed aristocrats and rising commercial elite had gone to college and university than the ruling politicians in Britain. Being as competent as their British counterparts, if not more so, they saw no reason why they should have to endure any British intervention in their affairs at all.

Yet, in the beginning, there was considerable reluctance to sever all connection with the king. Charters granted by him had initially enabled the colonies to become bodies politic. Moreover, in this case the “rulers” and the “ruled” were, to a large extent, the same people. There was ambivalence, even confusion, as to which way the colonists should go.

But doubts were cast aside when in January 1776 Tom Paine published a little book, called Common Sense. Sweeping aside tradition and sentiment, and stating his case in simple but crisp and vigorous language, Paine argued first that monarchy was an absurd and dysfunctional institution. Second, it was equally absurd and dysfunctional that a small island 3,000 miles away should rule a continent. Third, he reasoned that independence would bring America substantial advantages, open world markets to its trade, and make it a lot more prosperous. He also presented in simple terms the philosophy of natural rights, which the Declaration of Independence incorporated a few months later.

Paine’s book sold more than a million copies within a few months of its publication, and virtually every American had either read it or heard its argument. It rallied the undecided and the wavering to action. I am aware of no other single book (other than the scriptures) that had such massive impact on the course of events.

The 13 American colonies joined together to declare themselves independent on the July 4, 1776. Their declaration set forth the reasons that had impelled them to break their connection with the British.

Some of the more important American grievances, which are in the nature of accusations against King George III (actually the British parliament), may be noted. The king refused assent to wholesome and necessary laws passed by the colonial legislatures. He called the legislatures to session at distant and inconvenient places for “the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.” He dissolved them repeatedly for opposing his invasions of the people’s rights,” and did not allow elections to replace them for long periods of time. He made judges “dependent on his will” by controlling their tenures and salaries. He created new offices, and “sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

He sought to make the military independent of and superior to civil authority. He stopped America’s trade with much of the world, and imposed taxes on Americans without their consent. In sum, he acted like a tyrant in all his actions and showed that he was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

In the context of that time the alleged deprivations would not appear to have been onerous enough to justify rebellion. A student of that period would see some of them as exaggerative or inconsequential. They became intolerable because those at the receiving end thought of themselves as a “free people,” and not as subjects. Moreover, many of these people had internalized a certain political philosophy, which the second paragraph of the declaration set forth in sublime language.

The formulations of the declaration are presented as “self-evident truths,” the foremost of them being that all men are created equal, implying that no one has an inherent right to rule over another. (But note that this assertion was not intended to apply to women and persons of colour.) Next, these men have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The original formula in John Locke’s political theory, from which all of this is taken, stressed as inalienable the right to property next to life and liberty. Pursuit of happiness replaced property presumably because by the time the declaration was written the war with Britain had already begun, and the foot soldiers who would go out to fight and get killed were not likely to be property owners. But even they would be free to look for ways of making themselves happy.

Men establish government to protect their rights from usurpation or undue interference. It will bear emphasis that this is a government they themselves have created. It follows that governments derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed.” It follows also that if a government does not perform to the people’s satisfaction, they have the right to “alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

There is no real danger that the above reasoning will incline men to governments for “light and transient reasons.” Experience has shown that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,” than to seek relief by abolishing regimes to which they have become accustomed. But when “a long train of abuses” shows the ruler’s design to place them under absolute despotism, it is their right, indeed it is their duty, to throw off such government.

The declaration relies on the theory that in creating government men acted on the basis of a social contract. Its proponents in Britain and Europe reasoned that there must have been a time when people lived, each on his own, without any external agency to regulate their interaction. Finding this state of affairs to be inconvenient, they came together, talked things over, and agreed to form themselves as a civil society and create a government to serve their common purposes.

When, as college students, we read various versions of this theory, we took it for granted that it was all a bunch of suppositions, and that the “events” purported to have taken place were not known ever to have taken place. This does not hold for America. It is a matter of record that in many instances persons living in proximity to one another in New England (in some cases as few as 20), and also in territories to the west, made agreements to establish themselves as townships and create governments, specifying their forms and procedure, and rendering their agreement to writing. The social contract and the emergence of government as a creature of the people were thus a part of the actual American experience and were known as such to those who signed the declaration.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the declaration, was a landed aristocrat, owner of some 10,000 acres of good land and 300 slaves, a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, an exceedingly well read and cultivated man. His lands and slaves notwithstanding, he was intellectually a radical liberal. An occasional rebellion, he thought, was good to have, for it kept the people politically aware and the rulers attentive to their needs and wishes.

Social contract need not be regarded as a transaction done somewhere in the remote past; it should be treated as an ongoing bond between the governors and the governed. A constitution approved by the people embodied such a bond. Jefferson maintained that every 20 years or so, as a new generation had come of age, an opportunity should be provided for a constitution to be reviewed and revised to suit the temper of the time and the new needs of the people.

Some of Jefferson’s philosophical persuasions did not gain widespread acceptance after the country had settled down and the revolutionary fervour abated. The constitution of 1787 proceeded from a degree of caution, even scepticism, concerning the general public’s influence on the government’s workings. The constitution can be amended, but the process of amending it was made slow, long, and cumbersome.

Jefferson’s preferences are more at work at the local and state levels in America. In some of the states, if the legislature or the town council will not make a law that the people desire, they can resort to a referendum and have it adopted. If a large enough number of people are dissatisfied with an elected official’s performance, they do not have to wait until the next election; they can remove him through a process called “recall.”

It should be understood that America was largely an agrarian society until about the middle of the 19th century. By the end of that century it had become fully industrialized, and numerous centres of private power, capable of controlling individual and group behaviour, had arisen. America had become a dynamic, even expansionist, world power. The rights to life and the pursuit of happiness are probably as secure now as they were in 1776. Indeed, happiness may now be pursued in ways that the founding father had never contemplated. But the right to liberty is not to be taken for granted. It has come under stress from time to time and, as any number of libertarians will tell you, its preservation calls for constant vigil.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of assachusetts at Amherst, USA.
E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

THE sobering realities of political games have at last overtaken General Musharraf’s reformist zeal. The practices of the past four years never conformed to his theories. The legal changes now made have struck at the very root of the system he intended to introduce.

The 17th amendment, the National Security Council act, the local government ordinance and the police order were the chief ingredients of his concept of democracy with checks devolving to the village. The base was thus intended to be laid for good governance with continuous accountability at all levels. Not one of these aims has been achieved. Instead, confusion and conflict have worsened and the federal structure has come under renewed strain on the charge, ironically, of excessive centralization.

It is the country’s good fortune that the economy was left out of the charter of reforms to steer its own course. Liberalized banking and rapid privatization have helped the economy grow. It should have grown faster but for (as the prime minister told German investors the other day) Pakistan’s “image problem”. This means that the government is not democratic and that society is wracked by the forces of violence.

The checks at the top are all on the powers of the prime minister, none on that of the president. In the provinces, sometimes clashing parallel lines of authority, emanate from the governor and the chief minister. Clashes are more frequent when the two belong to different parties. In Karachi which in some ways is more important than the rest of the province, the citizens and civil servants have had to contend with a governor who belongs to one party (MQM), a chief minister who belongs to another (PML-Q) and, until recently, the nazim who belonged to yet another (JI). And then, there is a superintending corps commander.

When it comes to accountability not one minister or public representative or senior official, not at least to public knowledge, has been arraigned before the National Accountability Bureau for abuse of power or corruption though stories abound of their misdeeds. The NAB remains preoccupied with the past till retiring nazims, who were on the wrong side of the provincial governments and have not been re-elected, are brought before it.

The nazims who got along with the government, even if they wasted or embezzled public funds, get away. The unwritten rule of Pakistan’s politics that only those among the elected office holders who are opposed to the government of the day are called to account is unlikely to change this time round.

Power has devolved but to be concentrated in the nazims. And the district nazim had indeed emerged as a challenger to the chief minister’s executive authority in his own jurisdiction. Angry and slighted, it was but natural for chief ministers, ministers and parliamentarians to join forces against the authority of the nazim.

After all, politics is local and about patronage. And since it is the parliamentarians and not the nazims who sustain the president and his government in office, General Musharraf had no option but to succumb to their pressure leaving the once blustering NRB to lick its wounds in silence.

The amended law does not curtail the functions of the district nazim but he can now be suspended and even removed by the chief minister and must obey all his instructions given in public interest of which he himself would be the judge. The next lot of nazims thus would have to act as subordinates of the provincial governments to avoid dismissal.

The councillors, who were elected by the people (and in turn elected the nazims) and whose participation general Musharraf desired in the decision-making process at the grassroots, found no voice in the system as it actually evolved. A study conducted by an NGO under the auspices of the Asian Development Bank, which constantly oversees the working of the local bodies, has determined that though the law gives wide powers to the councillors they exercise none and the money a union council gets for development and welfare is barely enough for the stipend and expenses of the nazim.

The study has also come to a sad but not unsurprising conclusion that Musharraf’s system has not empowered the people but strengthened the hands of the landlords. That is in the rural areas. Even in Karachi only the nazim counted and was the repository of all power and focus of public attention. The councillors who elected him and could also remove him were heard only protesting and demanding stipends for themselves.

The basic objective of devolution was to give a feeling of participation and dignity to the common man. That could also be its only justification. It stands defeated. The system as now modified would only exacerbate the conflicts in society and in power circles without achieving its objective.

In view of the past, the future is not hard to read and is ominous. The political stresses will grow, making civil servants and police pawns in the power game. The outgoing nazim of Karachi predicts large scale bloodshed and wants the army to supervise the next polls, defying the policy of his party — the Jamaat-e-Islami — which sees no role whatsoever for the army in civil life. Some ruling coalition leaders publicly wonder whether elections will be held at all. Both tend to forget that the responsibility for conducting elections in a peaceful manner and on schedule is vested neither in the government nor in the army but in the election commission. The chief election commissioner can commandeer troops if he finds it necessary to do so. It is bizarre behaviour on the part of our political leaders that they talk of strengthening institutions and in the next breath undermine them. The best and safe course would be to review quickly but thoroughly the distribution of subjects and responsibility among the federation, the provinces and the local councils.

Naming the district council or city municipality as government has made the nazims entertain wrong notions about their basic role. It is civic essentially a role and not ideological or political or one that concerns long-term planning. The nazim of Karachi planned seven mass transitways but could not build even elementary shelters for the waiting bus passengers; he signed contracts for desalination plants but did not repair the leaking water pipelines; he prepared a 10-year development for Karachi without the city council and the people knowing what projects he had in mind and how would they be financed. Above all, he aspired to make Karachi a model Islamic city. Unimpressed, the Sindh government is preparing to take Niamatullah Khan to NAB despite his known integrity. The contentions on both sides are political and not public welfare.

An important, though unwelcome to the government, measure to further real democracy and good governance would be to abolish the National Security Council. It has done nothing in the last four years and is unlikely to do anything worthwhile in the next two or three. The only purpose in creating it was to prevent military takeovers. That eventuality is unlikely so long as General Musharraf is the chief of army staff and also presides over the council. When he leaves the army post, the parliament, no matter which party commands majority, is bound to repeal the law that created it.

The creation of district governments and the National Security Council have been two big mistakes. The philosophers and architects behind these should undo both and apologize for the damage done even though, as Art Buchwald put it, we live in an “age of non-apology”. Our leaders say or do whatever they like for they know they don’t have to account for it later. Musharraf should depart from that tradition. To admit and undo a wrong is not a sign of weakness but an act of courage.