Muslim Leaders' "Common Word" Letter

This week's letter, "A Common Word Between Us and You," by 138 of the world's most powerful Muslim clerics, scholars and intellectuals to leaders of the worldwide Church is being hailed by many as something of a miracle. However, such a response is not just overly optimistic but hopelessly naive.

In a display of supposedly unprecedented unity, the letter calls for peace between Christians and Muslims, arguing that the most fundamental tenets of Islam and Christianity are identical: love of one (and the same) God, and love of one's neighbour.

There are two crucial points to make in response. Firstly, the Muslims who penned the 29-page statement are in fact seeking a one-way dialogue on their own terms: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes." Yet, as the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, quoted by Archbishop Cranmer, rightly notes:

"What the Qur’an condemns, we do not believe. Whatever our doctrine of God, there are fundamental issues that must be addressed, such as refugees fleeing because of their faith and because of persecution ... But what I would stress is that dialogue between partners must be conducted in the integrity of each faith. One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted ... We may disagree about the nature of God but there are many other important areas of dialogue as well. There is justice, compassion, fundamental freedom, freedom to express beliefs, persecution of peoples. All these are matters of dialogue. Only one of them, the need for peace, is mentioned here."

Secondly, there is more to Islam than simply "peace" — there is also "jihad." And to quote the new Baroness Cox biography, "Eyewitness to a broken world" by Lela Gilbert:

"A key development in the concept of jihad is contained in this verse in the Koran:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor the Last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Prophet, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay the jizya (tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Sura 9:29, Medina)

... It must be noted that there are other verses in the Koran that speak of peace and respect for other people, especially "People of the Book" — Jews and Christians... However, traditional Islamic teaching has resolved any inconsistency between the verses of peace and the verses of war by adopting the principle of "abrogation", whereby the later revelations of the Prophet abrogate, or override, the earlier revelations. Unfortunately, this means that the more aggressive militaristic interpretations of jihad, associated with violence and terrorism, prevails over peaceable interpretations.

The most fundamental tenets of Christianity have given rise to Western democracy as we know it. Yet the most fundamental tenets of Islam set it on a course of conflict with what we all believe (believers and unbelievers alike) on a whole range of human rights issues, from the freedom of religion to equality of the sexes. As Baroness Cox warned earlier this year, "The time has come to draw a line in the sand: to say that, while we in Britain value cultural diversity and enshrine the principle of tolerance, we must also ensure that such values and principles are not used in ways that destroy the fundamental freedoms on which our democracy is built."

Time For Change

Just days after Michael Ancram gave us his "simple political creed," suggesting there are three core Conservative values — integrity, national pride and humanity — David Cameron has now summarised the beliefs that drive him: family, responsibility, and opportunity.

He asserts that the political agenda flowing from a belief in those three values "means that the most important driving force of everything you do, the principle and purpose of your politics, is to give people more freedom and control over their lives":

Because freedom is the real benefit of a strong family - it's the security it gives you to get on and get out and get up, with a strong family behind you if you fall.

It's because if you believe in responsibility, you have to give people freedom. You literally cannot be responsible for something unless you have power and control over it.

And it's because opportunity means the freedom to be a doer not a done-for, taking down the barriers so that everybody can make the most of their life.

So that will be the central test for the decisions I make: will it give people more freedom and control over their lives?

That is the overriding aim of the government I will lead...

This will be the choice at the election.

State control from Labour. Freedom with the Conservatives. And we will say to the British people - choose freedom."

Thus, for all the talking up of differences by the media, it is perhaps unsurprising that "the essence of the modern compassionate Conservatism" David believes in is not all that different from that described by Michael in his pamphlet Still a Conservative: "Freedom of the individual lies at the historic heart of Conservatism and sets us apart from those who believe the state knows best." As David maintains, this key principle of freedom applies to every issue and we should not make the mistake of accepting the false choice presented by those on the left who say he shouldn't talk about Europe, crime or lower taxes and by those on the right who say he shouldn't talk about the NHS, the environment or well-being.

N.B. If you are looking for the Ofsted report Time for change?, click here.

Freedom Fighter Or Terrorist?

Today's unveiling of the former South African President's statue in Parliament Square affords the opportunity to ask what the distinction is between a freedom fighter and a terrorist.

Strangely, despite several international conventions against terrorism, there is no agreed definition about what the term refers to and more than 100 definitions have been used in recent decades. Consider just the following four:

• The FBI opts for "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
• The CIA accepts "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."
• The British Terrorism Act 2000 refers to "the use or threat of action designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause" that "involves serious violence against a person, involves serious damage to property, endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action, creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system."
• The European Union deems terrorist offences to be intentional acts "which, given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation where committed with the aim of: seriously intimidating a population, or unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any acts, or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation."

As can be seen, the term is widely used but, in each case, definitions tend to reflect a bias towards the status quo, where any attempt to oppose the established order through violence is labeled "terrorism" while violence by established governments is presented as "defence" — even when that claim is questioned by some. Definitions can even embrace, for instance, mere disruption of a computer system in British law or groups of protestors in European law, leading some to voice concerns that "Methods of political protest available to ordinary people are under attack." On the other hand, even the actions of Mugabe's Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe would seem to be covered by most definitions.

Which brings us back to our initial question, is it possible to distinguish between a terrorist group and a liberation movement?

Obama, Islam & The West

Religion, as everyone knows, is a big deal in American politics. Which is why Barack Hussein Obama might be just what the world needs as successor to George W Bush.

Described as "a liberal's liberal" and "way to the left of the repositioned Mrs Clinton," the media has understandably latched onto the question of race and asks whether he could become America's first black president. However, the question of faith is equally interesting. For, although he is a committed Christian, as is indicated by his non-Western names, he comes out of a Muslim background. Last October he wrote in a piece called "My Spiritual Journey" in Time magazine: "I was not raised in a religious household ... In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology." So, like the vast majority of the world's Muslims, it may be a nominal Muslim background. Nonetheless, Muslim it is — as is evident from his 1996 biography, Dreams from My Father, which describes how his father was a Muslim, he was raised by a Muslim stepfather, and his first two years education was at a Muslim school. To any orthodox Muslim, that makes him a Muslim — and, as a professing Christian, an apostate Muslim, at that.

Just as Obama is quick to reject any suggestion that his campaign represents "an easy shortcut to racial reconciliation," neither does his candidacy promise any swift solution to the problem of radicalised Islam. However, it does offer him a unique opportunity to reach out to moderate Muslims, who represent the majority within Islam, and invite them to affirm article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief."

Writing "The next president" in the current issue of The Difference, Michael Veitch concluded, "Whichever candidate ultimately ends up in the White House, the sort of relationship they choose to forge with Britain and the rest of the world promises to be a spectacle no less fascinating than the election itself." Taking a personal stand against the kind of rhetoric we have heard preached even this week by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's deputy, over "apostate" Salman Rushdie's knighthood, may not win Barack Obama the American presidency, and would almost certainly make him the prime target of Al-Qaeda's hatred, but it would go a long way in helping draw a clear distinction between the radical and the moderate sections of the Muslim community.

As this week's Newsweek notes, "From his earliest days as a politician, Obama has made a career out of reconciling opposing sides." Having consistently opposed the Iraq war, he might be uniquely placed to help reconcile Islam and the West.

Freedom Is Not Free

"We are willing to pay a heavy price for our freedom. The only thing we ask the free world to pay is attention."

Friday morning I noted how President Bush had forged ahead on a path of global investment in HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa — taking a lead that the rest of the world's richest nations felt obliged to follow. While travelling in Europe, the oft-criticised American leader was also welcomed by a group of dissidents from all around the world—from Israel and Palestine, through Iran and Sudan, to Russia and China—who had gathered for the Prague Democracy and Security Conference. The above quote came from one of the organisers of Lebanon's "cedar revolution," the demonstrations that followed the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

President Bush repeated his vision that "Freedom can be resisted, and freedom can be delayed, but freedom cannot be denied." Sadly, experience seems to indicate that freedom is by no means inevitable and often is in fact denied—and is even undermined by both totalitarian regimes and elected governments alike, as was recently noted in international criticism of Britain's legislative over-reaction to the global threat of terrorism.

Nevertheless, moving on, the President also told the conference, "Free nations must do what it takes to prevail." Which begs the question, what will it take for freedom to prevail? By way of response, the conference concluded with Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky, and Jose Maria Aznar issuing The Prague Document, in which they call upon governments and peoples throughout the free world to help those trying to build free societies elsewhere by doing the following:

1. To demand the immediate release of all non violent political prisoners in their respective countries.
2. Instructing diplomatic emissaries to non-democratic countries to actively and openly seek out meetings with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies through non-violence.
3. Raising public awareness, through institutions in their own countries and through international bodies, of human rights abuses under non-democratic regimes.
4. Raising the question of human rights in all meetings with officials of non-democratic regimes.
5. Seeking national and international initiatives, in the spirit of the Helsinki Accords, that link bilateral and international relations to the question of human rights.
6. Exerting pressure, through peaceful diplomatic, political and economic means, on governments and groups abusing human rights to discontinue their practices.
7. Providing incentives, through diplomatic, political and economic means, to governments and groups willing to improve the human rights record in their countries and to embark on the road to democracy.
8. Isolating and ostracizing governments and groups that suppress their peaceful domestic opponents by force, violence or intimidation.
9. Isolating and ostracizing governments and groups that threaten other countries and peoples with genocide or annihilation.
10. Promoting best human rights and governance practices that have been found effective and beneficial in other countries, in particular in new and recent democracies.

Not a bad start to answering our question about how we should stand for our values in the world and develop an ethical foreign policy!

Free To Defend Freedom

"In an age of technology, the Internet has become the new frontier in the struggle for the right to dissent. With the help of some of the world’s biggest IT companies, governments such as those in Belarus, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia are monitoring chat rooms, deleting blogs, restricting search engines and blocking websites. People have been imprisoned in China, Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan and Viet Nam for posting and sharing information online."

We in the West take so much for granted — like the fact that I can write this blog and you can read it and, should you be sufficiently motivated, even comment on it. Today's Amnesty International annual report reminds us that not everyone enjoys such liberties — see for instance the recent cases of Sandmonkey, Savva Terentyev, Kianoosh Sanjari, and Kareem Amer.

Yet, as the foreword to Amnesty's report concludes, "Marches, petitions, virals, blogs, t-shirts and armbands may not seem much by themselves, but by bringing people together they unleash an energy for change that should not be underestimated ... People power will change the face of human rights in the 21st century. Hope is very much alive." It is in this spirit that The Difference will before the end of the week launch a campaign to help the people of Zimbabwe as they attempt to reclaim their democratic rights.

So, if you're sitting comfortably in the West, why not exercise your freedom and leave a comment? And if you're reading this in a country where you're at risk of imprisonment or worse, know that you are in our prayers.

Supporting Pro-Democracy Movements

"The international community must put more pressure on [Uzbek President Islam] Karimov or there will be another Andijan."

On the day that hundreds of thousands once again took to the streets in Turkey, we need to remember that today is also the second anniversary of the government massacre of pro-democracy protesters in eastern Uzbekistan.

This blog has monitored developments in Turkey as what happens there has the potential for having significant implications for both the direction of the European Union and the global conflict between moderate and extremist Islam. If we are serious about our desire to help promote democracy, then current human rights abuses in Uzbekistan should be of equal concern to us, as the country is of strategic importance to the future of the whole region.

When I worked in Central Asia, I often heard it said of the fertile Ferghana Valley in the east of Uzbekistan, the most populated area in Central Asia, that "Whoever wins the hearts of the people of Ferghana will win the hearts of the Uzbeks — and whoever wins the hearts of the Uzbeks, will win the hearts of the whole of Central Asia."  The West was wrong in 2005 to let Karimov play the disingenuous "war on terror" card and claim he was quashing Islamic extremists, just as the Foreign Office was wrong to censor the British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray when he attempted to raise concerns about widespread torture in the country.

If our Government's promises about developing a foreign policy with an ethical dimension are to mean anything, then we cannot continue overlooking such abuses. As we ponder what a truly ethical foreign policy would look like, it might be helpful to take a couple of minutes and watch this BBC news report recalling the Andijan uprising. We should be as determined that the blood of the hundreds of civilians killed there two years ago eventually leads to freedom in their nation as we are about the sacrifices still being paid daily in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American Dream

"Disagree from time to time we may; united we must always remain."

Her Majesty The Queen told President Bush at yesterday's White House banquet that, "If the Atlantic unites, not divides us, ours is a partnership always to be reckoned with in the defense of freedom and the spread of prosperity."

In a decade when the media appears to encourage anti-American sentiment here in Britain and America seems to have reversed fifty years of "support of a Europe whole and free" (at least with respect to its encouragement of Britain's closer integration with the continent), the Queen's words sound as much a warning as a celebration of our two countries' special relationship.

In his 1981 classic, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Samuel Huntington examined the persistent, radical gap between the promise of American ideals—liberty, equality, and hostility to authority—and the performance of American politics. He noted that, "American political ideals and values—the core of American national identity—have been continuously and overwhelmingly liberal, individualistic, democratic. American political institutions have reflected these values but have always fallen short of realizing them in a satisfactory manner," and concluded, "Critics say America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment only because it is also a hope."

As the Queen seems to imply, we would do well to remember that hope, rather than focus purely on the disappointments, to recall the ideals, rather than just the lies—lest we awake to discover the fundamental values of our two great nations have been crushed by pessimism and cynicism.

Bible Publishers Murdered

A German and two Turkish employees of a publishing house that distributes Bibles in eastern central Turkey have had their throats slashed, their hands and feet first being bound and their mouths gagged, despite being police protection.

The attack took place in the city of Malatya, a known stronghold of nationalists about 500 miles southeast of Istanbul and the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, who attempted to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II in 1981. The police arrived in time to see one of the assailants jumping from a second floor window and detained a total of five suspects at the scene. A Turkish television station has claimed the youths were all carrying an identical note declaring, "We did this for our country. They are attacking our religion."

It is believed the attack was the work of a local Islamist militant group and police are investigating the possible involvement of Turkish Hizbollah, the Kurdish Islamic group that aims to form a Muslim state in the Kurdish-dominated south-east.

Once again, how the Turkish authorities deal with this case will reveal much about the country's commiment to religious freedom. It is just over a year since Father Andrea Santoro was murdered while praying in his church in Trabzon, also in the east of the country, and exactly three months since the journalist and former chairman in the Armenian Evangelical Church, Hrant Dink, was assassinated in Istanbul.

The Rise Of Islam

"Not long before the British surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, assurances were still being given in parliament that ‘so vast is our superiority everywhere that no resistance on their part is to be apprehended’. Today, with not even Baghdad secured after over four years of war — and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars — the White House still talks in terms of a ‘victory’ over ‘extremists’ and ‘killers’, even if the delusion that a Jeffersonian democracy can be created in Mesopotamia appears to have been abandoned."

Drawing parallels between George Bush's war in Iraq and George III's war against the American colonists, David Selbourne argues in The Spectator that "the American imperium has entered on its decline after only some six decades" and that it is now "the turn of Islam to assert itself, for the third time in history, across large swaths of the globe."

If he is right, then not only is it imperative that we in the West should understand the contribution of Christianity to Western culture, but we also need to understand Islam and the differences between moderate Islam and fundamentalist Islam, or Islamism.

One of the principal differences between Islamism and Western democracy is in their approach to academic scrutiny. Like the predominant threat against our Western ideals throughout much of the last century, namely Communism, Islamism is intolerant of dissent, looking to and justifying its ideas and beliefs on the basis of an ultimate authority that cannot be questioned. By contrast, ideas in the West are accepted by submitting them to public inspection.

For Islamists, truth and knowledge are thus not to be discovered through open criticism and public enquiry but are represented by the revelation of God to the prophet Mohammed as recorded in the Koran and supplemented by the record of Mohammed's actions and sayings. As far as such Muslim fundamentalists are concerned, Western society is corrupt and weak because it is different from, and therefore inferior to, the perfect society described in their Scriptures – one that dictates, for instance, inequality between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims. By denying the equivalent of the separation between Church and State that allowed Western society to flourish, they promise those who accept their worldview not utopia in this life but paradise in the next and promise their martyrs a certain salvation that is unavailable in Islam by any other means.

You may recall a year or so ago when producers of Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great at the Barbican censored references to Islam in order to avoid the risk of a violent backlash from Muslims to the playwright's scenes in which the hero burns the Koran and says that Mohammed is "not worthy to be worshipped" and "remains in hell." Such censorship was not only a victory for political correctness over common sense but a defeat in our attempt to defend the Western tradition of freedom in the ongoing clash of civilisations that is the wider stage upon which the so-called war on terror is being conducted.

Countries such as Indonesia prove to the world that Islam is able to embrace the concept of individual liberties, such as freedom of expression. We whose societies are founded upon the freedoms imparted by our Christian heritage need to engage constructively with such moderates, seeking to understand their faith from their perspective, if we are to prevent the freedoms that are the building blocks of our way of life from being increasingly eroded over the coming years.

Turkey Violates Religious Freedom

EXCLUSIVE: My sources in Turkey inform me that authorities in the north-west of the country are trying to shut down yet another local church, less than a month after it purchased a building to use as its place of worship. The church is also being falsely accused in the local press and on local television of offering $25,000 to people who are willing to change their religion.

Property ownership for minority religious communities is beset with problems. Groups such as the Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrian Orthodox, and Jews are supposed to be allowed to own their own places of worship, while for Catholics and Protestants, the congregations or church communities have to own the buildings. Yet the state often refuses to recognise even this.

When negotiations were still in progress over Turkey's possible accession to the European Union, the country appeared willing to make concessions over religious freedom. However, now that these have stalled over the Turkish government's refusal to recognise the government of Cyprus in Nicosia, it seems that neither the governing Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AKP) nor the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) accepts the principle that all their citizens have rights. Neither party appears to have read or understood Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, still less that they are ready to grant individuals their rights to religious freedom. Turkish diplomats and secularist government officials fear that if the AKP increases its vote in elections scheduled later this year, it would be strong enough to change the Constitution; also that it could install a President who, unlike the current President, would not veto laws deemed to be part of an Islamist agenda.

It is just over a year since Father Andrea Santoro was murdered while praying in his church in Trabzon, in the east of the country, and less than two months since the journalist and former chairman in the Armenian Evangelical Church, Hrant Dink, was assassinated in Istanbul.