LONDON, Sept 19: With a special House of Commons debate on Iraq just days away, a respected British Muslim leader warned on Thursday that the US-led “war on terrorism” looked too much like a war on Islam.
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said there was “real concern from Muslims all around the world” over a possible US invasion of Iraq.
“We cannot support an unjust war,” Sacranie said before the publication in London of a book of essays on the Sept 11 attacks.
“At the moment there is not enough information being made available as to the purpose of such an attack on Iraq,” he said.
The Muslim Council of Britain is the most respected voice of the country’s Muslim community, which numbers 1.5 million according to government estimates. (Muslim leaders said the real number could be double.)
Sacranie’s remarks came as Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared for a special one-day debate in the House of Commons next Tuesday on the Iraq question and Britain’s role in it.
It is to be preceded by the release of a dossier that Blair hopes will convince skeptical Britons on the need to take a hard line on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his reputed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Blair is the European leader who most strongly backs US President George W. Bush’s position in Iraq, despite widespread public reluctance for Britain to join a conflict that lacks a clear UN endorsement.
Sacranie said: “The perception which is prevailing in the (British Muslim) community is that all the war against terror is a war against Islam and the Muslim community.”
He saw a double-standard in Bush and Blair pushing for a UN resolution that would threaten Saddam with military action, while at the same time Israel has yet to abide by UN motions aimed at it.
“The selectivity in the implementation of UN resolutions is not only unjust, but immoral and indefensible,” he said in a telephone interview.
In remarks prepared for the publication of “The Quest for Sanity”, a set of 30 essays by Muslims and non-Muslims on the impact of Sept 11, Sacranie said the “war on terror” looked more like a war on Islam.
“It seems the terrorists of Sept 11 had not only brought down the world’s two tallest buildings,” he said. “They also hit our own high towers of equal rights and equal inclusion.”
An ICM survey for the Guardian newspaper earlier this summer unearthed evidence of deteriorating relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain since Sept 11.
One in three Muslims had experienced hostility because of their religion, while 69 percent felt excluded from British life, the poll found.
Last December the government introduced an emergency law allowing foreign terror suspects to be held without charge or trial. Nine people are still being detained under the new measures.—AFP