Mick Hartley

In the Sunday Telegraph Jemima Khan reports on the recent “Is Islam good for London?” debate (via the DTPWs) and finishes off with this:

And although Muslims increasingly feel like a demonised minority, even by liberals, it is also true that Islam is an ideology. As such it must expect to be challenged in an open society, no matter how uncomfortable or personal that debate becomes. Not only must Islam – with its social and political mandate – expect to be challenged by modern secular society but, more importantly, it must also expect to be challenged from within the Islamic tradition. Its evolution depends on such a challenge.

But it would help greatly if critics of Islam would give as much attention to the moderate Muslims engaged in that vital internal debate as they do to the hook-handed, effigy-burning few.

She’s right about Islam needing to be open to challenge, but I’m not so sure about that last sentence. What does it mean? That every article which casts an unfavourable light on Muslims – whether it’s about suicide bombings, or more lashes for rape victims, or advice on wife beating, or calling Jews apes and pigs – should be matched with an article about Muslims doing good deeds, or maybe with a disclaimer that of course not all Muslims are like this? That seems a curious constraint on our normal standards of reporting. If a Tory MP, for example, made a speech in the course of which he proposed that all immigrants to this country should be forcibly sterilised, it would be extraordinary if the newspapers reporting this were then criticised for not making it clear that this was not the view of all Tories. It would be headline news, and the onus would, quite rightly, be on other Tories to denounce these disgraceful sentiments and to take the appropriate action, ie throw the bastard out of the party. Equally if some Abu Hamza type proclaims that it’s the duty of every Muslim to kill infidels, then obviously it merits being reported, and we should expect, not a footnote to the effect that this is not the view of all Muslims, most of whom are jolly nice people, but rather a robust rebuttal from the other Muslims. That this hasn’t on the whole been the response we’ve had is hardly the fault of those doing the reporting.

It’s not the responsibility of Islam’s critics to attempt some kind of balance. The onus is on the moderate Muslims to speak up and make their voices heard. The implication of what Khan writes is that moderate Muslims voices are ignored, but this is far from being the case. When they do speak out – as for instance Ed Husain, one of the speakers at this “Is Islam good for London?” debate and author of a book – they have no problem getting an audience for their views.

This call for balanced reporting seems to be an attempt to make out that there are two problems here: Muslim extremists on the one hand, and their critics on the other. That’s an echo of the old familiar response from Muslims caught advocating extreme views, the one that says it’s all the fault of the media, that they’ve been misquoted. Sadly we’ve seen and heard enough now to realise that it isn’t so. The problem of Muslim extremism isn’t with us, with Islam’s critics, but with Islam.