Racists use religion - Anthony McRoy reports from Oldham on racial violence

Racial violence has flared through the summer in the North of England. Anthony McRoy reports from Oldham where the trouble first began.

'Oldham has become a mini-Bosnia', according to the British National Party, which shocked everyone by saving both deposits in Oldham's seats in the General Election, the highest vote for a radical right-wing party since the War.

A BNP spokesman claimed they had received numerous membership enquiries following the result. Oldham's vote followed months of communal tensions, culminating in a riot in May when 500 Asian youths assaulted the police with missiles and petrol bombs.

Significantly, according to Muslim sources, the violence was partly spurred by white youths deliberately urinating on a mosque. In late June, the violence also spread to nearby Burnley, and in July to Bradford, with several nights of riots between whites and Asian/Muslim youths.

Anti-Muslim strategy

BNP's electoral strategy principally rested on specific anti-Muslim sectarianism rather than generalised anti-Asian racism. Their website's article, 'The Situation in Oldham: Ethnic Cleansing Muslim Style', commented on the riots: 'This is how extremists within the Muslim community in Oldham are repaying the hospitality of the people who ... allowed them to settle ...'. Their leader referred to the council 'removing bollards with the Oldham Owl on them because it is a graven image and against Muslim religion.' BNP election literature denounced 'Asian racist gangs' for declaring 'no-go areas ... This is ethnic cleansing, Muslim-style'.

They urged a boycott of Asian businesses, but not against 'shops and take-aways' owned by 'Chinese or Hindus, only Muslims, as it's their community we need to pressure.' They also advocated that new mosques be banned until 'Asian' elders 'reined-in' their youth. Notably, they did not refer to Hindu temples or Sikh gurudwaras.

Similarly, in Burnley, where they took 12% of the vote, their candidate 'presented a 1,000-name petition against ritual slaughter... to several Burnley animal welfare groups - and also helped to stop the sale of ritually slaughtered meat at a local supermarket. He... once chained himself up to the town hall railings as a protest against a council decision to spend money researching the idea of twinning Burnley with a village in Pakistan...' This may be the first UK election where Islamophobic sectarianism played a major role.

Islamic outrage

British-Muslims are outraged at this development. The Islamic Human Rights Commission declared that the BNP's strategy showed the urgent need to end the legal loophole whereby Jews and Sikhs, but not Muslims, are protected from abuse and discrimination. Since, excluding white converts, Muslims are Britain's largest 'ethnic' minority, this lets the BNP freely attack most non-whites, provided they do so on a religious basis. This explains their approach in Oldham, specifically excluding Chinese or Hindus.

Muhammad Aziz of 'Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism', stated that they would be sending an investigative delegation to Oldham to speak to various communities - including Christians - to discover both what happened and what the people wanted to do about it.

As the Muslim peer Baroness Uddin observed, the BNP anti-Muslim approach was enabled by the existence of pervasive Islamophobia in society. Muslim complaints have some force. The media's constant linkage of adjectives like 'extremists', 'terrorists', etc. almost whenever the word 'Muslim' appears has encouraged a negative popular image of Muslims. Moreover, this message is endorsed by traditionally anti-racist Leftists, as demonstrated by the National Union of Students' 1999 pamphlet, 'Racism: a light sleeper', which repeatedly smeared Muslims as 'racists', enabling the BNP to issue a similar message.

Anti-white violence

Oldham's Muslims, however, are not angelically innocent. Police statistics show that over 60% of racial attacks are perpetrated by Asians on whites. Even if some crimes on Asians go unreported, there clearly is a problem of anti-white violence. Oldham Christian sources state that attacks on whites are often under-reported. Both Asian Christians and Hindus report attacks by Muslim youth, and blame the mullahs for sectarian incitement. Christian and Muslim sources alike testify that Oldham is a stronghold of Taliban-supporters, whose attitudes to non-Muslims are hostile. Last year the Hindu Diwali festival was physically attacked by Muslim youths.

The Muslim magazine Q-News observed that unlike their immigrant forebears, 'today Muslim youth receiving racist abuse or violence tend to retaliate...' Some Muslims have recently formed 'Combat 786'(the numerical value of 'Allah') to physically fight white extremists like 'Combat 18'.

Often Asian youths, rebelling against parental strictures, indulge in all the worst features of post-Christian culture, like drugs and violence. Imams, imported from the subcontinent or the Middle East, are unable to address these issues and problems like sexual temptation in a permissive society, and discrimination. A Muslim source stated that few Oldham imams speak English.

Reverse discrimination

Anti-white violence influenced even those who were not prejudiced against Asians or Muslims (in fact, the BNP claims to have picked-up votes from some blacks and Hindus in Oldham!). If whites feel that they are facing racist/sectarian violence that the police are unable to address because of 'political correctness', it is unsurprising that the BNP attracted support from people who had genuine fears. The council (with a Muslim Mayor-elect) aided this perception, by stupidly removing the English flag on St. George's Day. To Oldham's whites, complaining of 'reverse discrimination', this seemed a calculated insult to white/English identity. Election literature showed pictures of the flag-removal, stating that 'anti-white racism begins like this and ends like this' (showing the pensioner assaulted by Asian thugs).

Muslims must recognise that not all 'Islamophobic stereotypes' are false; in Egypt, some Islamic guerrillas often physically attack Christians, and in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, Christian witness is banned, practices British-Muslim leaders rarely if ever condemn, fuelling images of Muslims as violent bigots. Oldham's Muslim youth violence and 'no-go' areas mirror these instances, and provided opportunity for BNP Islamophobia. When Oldham-based imam Shafiq ul-Rehman was arrested for 'terrorist' links, what must Oldham whites (and Hindus) have thought about their Muslim neighbours bringing a 'terrorist' to their town?

Challenge for evangelicals

This situation is challenging for English evangelicals, who, unlike their Ulster and Scots compatriots, have little modern experience of reconciliation across the sectarian divide, whilst preserving their evangelical integrity. For it to work, both whites and Muslims, must denounce attacks on all communities. Nonetheless, there are hopeful moves towards communal harmony by Christian leaders.

Terry Durose, Pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Glodwick, outside whose chapel the riot occurred, has held meetings with Muslim leaders to promote reconciliation. He has also spoken with national Islamic organisations investigating the situation, and forthrightly expressed concern about Muslim youth violence. Terry stated that the situation had given Christians opportunity to show Muslims the love of Jesus, by demonstrating that not all whites are prejudiced or Islamophobic. He commented that, paradoxically, the troubles have resulted in spiritual blessing for the congregation! Christians from all over Britain have contacted him to say they are praying for the situation. Pastor Geoff Brunton of Burnley's Queensgate Pentecostal Church, a multi-racial congregation with an Asian fellowship, near whose building one riot happened, said that Christians are praying for communal peace in his troubled town.

Perhaps it is time for us to at least ask the question if some evangelicals -notably Christian-Zionists - have helped to promote Islamophobia. Equally, Muslims must acknowledge that they helped produce Islamophobia by anti-Christian violence, discrimination and 'no-go' areas in both Saudi Arabia and now Oldham. Reconciliation takes two to tango. The alternative is indeed another Bosnia.