Mr. Roger Hardy

Thank you very much -- and well, Jorg, I have no regrets about recommending you. The last session was extremely interesting. I have some regrets, however, about the fact that you are listening to me rather than to John Burns of the New York Times. John Burns is still in Baghdad. He'd expected to come out by now, but he's still there. And let me just take the chance to say that whatever people like me may have to say about U.S. foreign policy, and I have a few things to say, the best of the American journalists are among the best, they really are. And I would include, just taking the correspondents who have been in Baghdad these last few weeks, months, John Burns of the New York Times and some of you will read probably Anthony Shadid, who is still in Baghdad for The Washington Post.

Well, so you're stuck with me.

There was a cartoon in Le Monde, which has long stuck in my mind, the work of Plantu. I am a tremendous fan of Plantu, he's still going now -- and in this particular cartoon there was a group of cops, a group of French cops and they were in a sort of school room, classroom situation and they were looking very intently at two pictures on the wall in front of them. Now Plantu has his own way, some of you will know his work, of drawing Arabs. He draws the Arab in his own way. So the first picture has the Arab with the curly beard, he gives him the curly beard, and the Muslim prayer cap. And the next picture beside it has the face and the curly beard and the Muslim prayer cap. The two pictures are identical -- and underneath them, in French of course, one says "Good Muslim" and the other one says "Bad Muslim".

I'm fond of this cartoon. I don't know exactly when he did it, but it was well before 11 September, but it would be still a cartoon that could be run now, in my opinion. And I find myself taking issue on this point about the 11th of September with the panellists, distinguished as they were, in the last session. I was surprised that (in their view) the 11th of September with regard to our theme, the Muslims of Europe, was not a big turning point. To my mind it was a huge turning point for Muslims in Europe, for Muslims everywhere and for the relationship between Islam and the West. I'm not sure if this is because I'm in the media. It certainly, in my view, had a very big impact on the media. But my judgment is it had a big impact, period. Why? Because if I had to put it simply, it increased very sharply, very sharply in my view, a polarization which, yes, had existed before, but there are some events in our lives which push forward some processes, attitudes that existed before, but now they exist in letters a foot high. They existed before, but now they exist with a much higher profile, and it seems to me that's what 11th of September did -- and you can see that polarization at all kinds of levels. It exists globally, if you accept talking about the terms Islam and the West -- some people, including my friend Sami, are not happy about the terms -- but we use them as a shorthand. And it exists regionally, if you talk about the big issues in the Middle East, Palestine, Iraq and so on. And it exists, this polarization, locally, even at street level in our own societies now. And part of this change, part of this pushing forward of a process, which I think was there long before 11th of September, is that it exaggerated the fact, it accentuated the fact , that Islam now is no longer just a foreign-policy issue. It's a domestic issue as well, and the two dimensions interact -- and many Muslims would feel, and I would also feel, that they interact to the detriment of Muslims, particularly in the imagery, what I like to call the media imagery, of Islam and of Muslims.

It seems to me, if you think about it, in our politics at the level of the political leaders in western Europe, in the societies and in the media, we are sending out, consciously or otherwise, two sets of messages to the Muslims in our midst. And if I had to put it simply now, one set is, as it were, today's agenda on our programme and the other set is tomorrow's agenda on our programme. So you have -- I’m going to interpret those two sets of issues in my own way, if I may -- so it's as if we're saying to Muslims on the domestic issues, the bread and butter issues -- this is a media message too; it may vary obviously between liberal papers, conservative papers and so on -- but nevertheless what you could call, I think, the sort of mainstream message is -- "Well, be good citizens," "Integrate into our societies," "Send your kids to school and all the rest of it." Implied message, subtext -- "We are nice multicultural societies."

The second set of messages  -- addressed to the same groups of people and essentially addressed by the same groups of people, including the media -- are "Don't join the radical movements," "Don't go to radical mosques," "Don't read radical literature." Subtext: "If you do, you'll be in trouble." And if you think about this for just a moment, one set of messages, in a way, I know I'm simplifying, in a way says "You're welcome -- there are rules, do this, do this, you're welcome” -- and the other set of messages says, "Oh, by the way, you're not welcome." I don't think I'm exaggerating. I think it's much more than a mixed message. It is a contradiction. Yes, you can build a mosque, but we have the right to monitor your mosque. You can buy a telephone, but in certain cases we have the right to monitor your telephone. Am I exaggerating? These are the messages coming from our governments and from the local authorities and the media also, as I said consciously or unconsciously, by reflecting this, by reinforcing this, we are stuck with these two discourses. They existed before the 11th of September, but there’s a contradiction, as it seems to me, between them -- and I hope this will be picked up tomorrow. I'm trying not to trespass too much on the territory of tomorrow, but these issues cannot be disentangled, the domestic agenda (on the one side) and the terrorism, foreign-policy, the crazy guy's agenda on the other side. If you like, the social worker's agenda and the policeman's agenda.

But you may say, he's not really talking very much as a journalist here. I think I am, but you may think I'm perhaps not. I do want to say something about Islamophobia and then say a couple of other things as well. But it seems to me what I've tried to describe just now is the frame, the necessary frame, in which to look at these issues. I'm a bit fed up with going to conferences -- and I go to quite a lot on this and similar issues -- where people bring along, people from different countries, different backgrounds, bring, as it were, their hitlist of their favourite terrible things in the media. Now I've got one too, I've got fat files full of them, as a matter of fact, but I'm fed up with it. I take this as read. And that's my first point about Islamophobia. It's there. It exists in the media as well as in society and in the political elite, which was by the way the message of that report by the Runnymede Trust here in Britain. The media came in for a lot of stick from that report, but it was an indictment of British society from top down, if you see what I mean.

I would add to that, but very briefly -- I can only put this on the table and then run away -- the term Islamophobia is not without its difficulties, it is not without its critics. We use it now and it's part of the discourse, it's entered the sort of bloodstream of society. That's fine. We need a word for it. Fred Halliday has suggested “anti-Muslimism”, even uglier than Islamophobia, but one can see why he was looking for this. But also my problem in a way is with the phobia part. But rather than dwell on that I would just say this, that sometimes in conversations with people, I'm used as a sort of a lightning rod by the BBC, but occasionally voluntarily -- "come on, hit me", and people hit me, one way or another and they come out with these lists of things, the latest thing John Humphries said or whoever it may be. But I sometimes feel not enough time is spent on asking the "why" question and people don't ask the why, why is Islamophobia in the media because they think it's self-evident. To me, and I'm in the media, it's not that self-evident. I want to see something spelt out and discussed and debated and I'm not hearing much. And to put it simply, because I don't have time to say more, people sometimes say to me, “Well, there's prejudice in the media against Islam and against Muslims. Why? Oh, because the media are Islamophobic". So this doesn't take us very far and it seems to me we’ve got to get out of this closed circle if we want to actually talk about things. So I'm ready to use it, it's there now, it's a term, (but) it's not without its problems in my view.

The second thing I want to say and really my last point -- I'm taking as read that there's all sorts of terrible things, and if any of you want to talk about them and raise them, that's fine with me -- but I want to look at the question "what is to be done." The famous "what is to be done" question. And I have two things to say about this. First of all, don't expect from the media what the media will not produce. And I mean by that, asking the media to act responsibly is a bit like asking the fox to become a vegetarian. I'm tempted to say, but perhaps I shouldn't say it in polite company, it's a little bit like asking the brothel keeper to practise chastity. The media bosses will talk about responsibility. But we judge them -- and we should judge them -- by what they do, not by the lip service they pay to certain principles including moral principles. Now I do not mean by this, and I want to underline this, I do not mean by this that the media are not capable of change. They are. But in my judgment as a hack, as a media man, as a journalist -- I was once called a 'hackademic', but that I wear with pride; I can tell you it wasn't meant as a compliment, but I took it (as one) -- for me as a hackademic, the media will not change in my judgment -- particularly on these issues, but on any issue for that matter on which people may want them to change -- for moral or altruistic reasons. They may, however, change for immoral and selfish reasons. And Muslims can buy into this -- and it picks up very nicely from what Jorg said about the difference between the local media and the national media. Because, while I agree with you, Jorg, it seems to me there are lessons, even a sort of feeding process that may move -- I think is moving a bit anyway, not dramatically -- from the local to the national in this sense: Mr. Murdoch wants you to buy his newspapers, whether you're a Muslim or anything. He doesn't care. If you give your money and pay for his newspapers, he doesn't mind if you are an atheist or a Seventh Day Adventist. Or whether you believe in hobgoblins. You pay your money and that's what he wants. Now does it mean his newspaper are free of bias and prejudice? No. But we are seeing now that people with a quite familiar, normal, capitalist impulse do not go out, normally, to offend huge numbers of people in their societies. If they think there will be a reaction, not only will Ali not buy the newspaper, but there'll be a fuss. Ali's friends or some group in London or some well-wishers -- and journalists are as cynical as hell about this -- do-gooders will be e-mailing them and pestering them and phoning up their bosses -- and this is the new political correctness, and this is how journalists see it, this will be part of the new correctness and it will give them a bad time. Great. Great. There's an opening there. But don't expect it to be done for beautiful reasons.

And my final point, which may seem really strange, is this. How will we know when we've succeeded? Which may seem to you the most unreal question that one could ask on an issue like this at a conference like this. I ask it, because I do not believe, as some do, with a kind of fatalistic pessimism, that Islamophobia is a phobia – it's like a virus, it's like SARS, only in the most virulent form and therefore we're stuck with it, so to speak. Worse than SARS, worse than AIDS possibly -- it's there and it will be there for all time. I don't believe that at all. It is a big problem, but it is not without solution. It is not the only possible discourse, if I can use this word that academics love to use, and we are not without a counter-discourse -- alternatives.

How will we know if we've had any success -- if this form of prejudice, like other forms of prejudice in our history, has not gone away, there's no 100 percent in these matters, but has been marginalized, has been kicked to the edges where it belongs? And my answer is banality. I yearn for banality. When the issue of Islam has become banal – the French have a word, a useful word, we don't have this word "banalise" -- when it's been “banalized”, we will have achieved something. It's a bit like saying when Israel has become banal, we'll know that peace has broken out in the Middle East. When Islam has become banal – everyday -- part of the fabric, the day-to-day fabric of our day-to-day lives -- at that point, in my judgment, Muslims will cease being seen as a set of problems and will start being seen as human beings.