In a public address to the Greencoat Forum earlier this week Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain explained why the word Islam should not be accepted as a euphemism for ‘terrorism’ in the British press. At a forum entitled ‘The Britain I would like to see’, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, chair of the Muslim Council of Britain, spoke about Islam in Britain.
He replied to the question of whose responsibility it was to protect young Muslim people from radicalization by saying that radicalization is inevitable while Muslim ‘ghettos’ continue to exist in and around Britain. As long as there is minimal integration between Muslim communities and other ethnic and religious groups, he said, and as long as young Muslims feel disconnected from British political structures and have little sense of being able to effect the changes that they wish to see in society, they may be vulnerable to extremist influences.
One thing Sir Iqbal would like to change, if he could, was to ban the use of the word ‘Muslim’ as a general term. It is not fair, he explained, that each time some hothead extremist blows himself up in a marketplace the headlines should focus on the perpetrator’s faith, that ‘Muslim’ should be the word that is repeated time and again. It is especially important that the media not focus so singularly on the actions of the lunatic few, Sir Iqbal said. Individuals should not be described on the front pages by words like ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ — especially at a time when Muslims in the UK are trying to explain their religion to the rest of society against a backdrop of terrorism and a war in Afghanistan. He appealed to Britain as a “mature society” to acknowledge the importance of faith identity and not to “discard Islam on the basis of sharia law”.
