June 24, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 27, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 23: A leader of the Muslim community in Britain said here on Friday that the community had tried to and succeeded in improving its image tarnished by the event of 9/11.

“How to reverse the image created by the media was a major issue for us,” said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in a lecture at the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII).

Muslims’ participation in the “unified response” to the 7/7 terror attacks in London helped intensify interaction between the community and the British society and government which led to better understanding of Islamic values and the Muslims, he said.

As a result BBC and ITV channels agreed to stop using the term “Islamic terrorism”, he said. “We have regular meetings with officials in which we firmly oppose the British policies on Iraq and Palestine”.

Sir Iqbal said the 1.6 million Muslims living in Britain “cannot be marginalised” by the society. They were in fact being heard more attentively since their political representation has increased.

Senator Mushahid Hussain, who spoke after him, observed that Muslims in Britain “enjoy far more rights than their co- religionists do in some Muslim countries”.

“A major problem of the Muslim societies is the political gap between their rulers and the ruled, between their elite and the street,” he said, calling for introspection.

“We have to reverse the wrongs within our societies, rather than engaging in blame game,” said the senator while admitting that “West’s Islamophobia is a serious challenge”.

Senator Mushahid Hussain observed that the repugnant theory of clash of civilizations was “peddled by a professor of Harvard University, not by any Madressah — and at a time when the US and the Muslim world were allies”.

Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq, who was introduced by the senator as “a progressive and enlightened minister”, informed the audience that an agreement on introducing “modern education” in the Madressah was “98 per cent ready” and would be signed with Madressah managements in about 10 days.

He, too, accused western observers of propagating that Madressah were the breeding ground of terrorists.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, he said, silenced a visiting British Defence College team which persisted in questioning him about “the suicide bombers produced by Madressahs” by asking them if any vaccine had been produced to immunise people against committing suicide.