Dr. Jorgen Nielsen

I think what underlies this whole issue is the factor that has been referred to on a number of occasions already, the generationship of indigenization of Islam in Europe. I think it was symbolized in Britain, certainly, by the Rushdie affair. That was when the generation of Muslims born in Britain or who had been brought to Britain very young first reached the age of adulthood and encountered frustration and discrimination in the labour market. You can look at the Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic figures when you compare the 1981 and 1991 Census. In the 1981 Census, 10-year age group of 6-15 was the largest of all the 10-year groups in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi population. Of course, if you follow that group from 1981 to 1989, they're out of school, they're out of college, they are meeting the frustration of discrimination in the labour market and the Rushdie affair mobilizes them. If it hadn't been Rushdie it would have been something else. The frustration was tangible and available. And that new generation, in that process of liberalization from its parents, begins to think of itself much more as Muslim as distinct from any one particular ethnic group of their parents. I remember in 1982, in September, I happened to be visiting Birmingham central mosque at jum`ah prayer on the Friday immediately after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut. There was a symbolic, token collection of money for the victims - and that was it. We never heard anything more about Sabra and Shatila.

But come the early 90s, after the mobilization of Rushdie and then the first Gulf war, the agenda has changed, significantly. Yes, Kashmir is still on the agenda, of course it is. But it no longer has the monopoly. Bosnia moves the young Muslim community, in particular, in a way that no other foreign policy issue had moved it before. There was talk among young Muslims about whether this was the first sign of a Europe wanting to cleanse itself of Muslims, and whether they were next. That uncertainty was, to a degree, assuaged by the next phase of policy in former Yugoslavia, the British support for the Kosovar Albanians against the Serb aggressions. And it was in the context of that war in Kosovo, with a new and enthusiastically received Labour government after the 1997 elections, that Tony Blair and Jack Straw (still Home Secretary) for the first time had a public, high profile meeting with representatives of the Muslim community hosted by the equally newly formed Muslim Council of Britain.

Through the 90s we see more widely an increasing linkage under the banner of a Muslim agenda between the domestic and foreign. This business about Islam and terror being linked post-9/11 is more a symptom of short memory than anything else. If you go back through the 1990s Islam and terror was constantly being linked. The tightening up of the anti-terrorism legislation, which followed immediately upon the Omagh bombing, was very much designed - and perceived by Muslim representatives as being designed - to give the security authorities an extra weapon in their armoury to deal with 'Londonistan'. But there were other links, and we heard the reference here earlier from Gilles Kepel to the debate at the time of the first Gulf war that was going around in the yellow press, which includes a significant proportion of the broadsheets, about the Muslim community being a potential fifth column. Interestingly, I think Gilles is actually wrong when he suggests that the public profile of Muslim leadership was split down the middle: those who were paid for by the Saudis and those who were not. In fact, the Saudi authorities called a meeting of representatives of those Muslim organizations, that they had been funding over the years, to Mecca and said to them, "Of course, you will support us now, won't you?". "Yes," they all said, went home and did the opposite, meaning that the Saudi embassy in London then had to engage in a significant review of its policy of funding Muslim organizations and projects in Britain.

It was also in the wake of this that the Foreign Office, in the period of John Major, began informal, quiet consultations with selected representatives of the Muslim community. I'm not quite sure whether the Foreign Office was the first part of the government to do this, it was certainly among the first, before the Home Office and certainly before the Education began to have regular meetings of this sort. You can then ask yourself why the Foreign Office was doing this. Foreign Office officials would tell you that UK foreign policy, of course, has to reflect the interests of the citizens of the country, of the voters, and since Muslims are a significant sector of the UK citizenship, therefore they also have to have a voice in the formation of foreign policy. Equally, of course, the Foreign Office's agenda is likely to have been a presentation of their policy to representatives of the Muslim community to ensure that they were, in a sense, kept on board. And through the Kosovo period this was comparatively easy. Priorities were in harmony. And I think that may, in fact, have led these Muslim representatives to higher expectations than they were entitled to.

So that when we get the build-up to the war on Iraq, the Muslim representatives feel that suddenly they are not being listened to - and there is a sense of frustration of expectations, disappointment, leading to a degree of anger. Now this anger coincides with the deeply visceral anger which pervades not only parts of the Muslim community, arising from the whole perception of U.S. foreign policy - with Britain tamely following behind – seeking to reorder the Middle East to suit an Israeli agenda. In this atmosphere, it's very difficult to perceive U.S. foreign policy in other ways. One of the things that the Muslim community leadership has to learn is that, just because they are talking to the Foreign Office it does not mean they can expect a Muslim-friendly policy all the time. There will be times when there will be differences. But we can also expect, and I think this is more serious, we can also expect that the Foreign Office should listen and not just use the links as a means of managing domestic opinion.

But I do wonder, by way of closing, how much effect domestic lobbying pressures in countries like Britain, and, I suspect, other countries in Europe as well, actually have on foreign policy. In Britain, probably less than other places. This strikes me as being a very stark contrast, and I stand to be corrected here by people like Shireen Hunter, to U.S. foreign policy, which, looked at from the outside, seems primarily to be an extension of domestic interests – the power of the lobbies, the concern with elections and, of course, at the moment this unholy alliance between neo-cons, the Christian right and the Zionist lobby. I do not see European governments, least of all the British government, being under the same kinds of pressures of domestic considerations that the U.S. government seems to be under. It happens to be convenient for Chirac's policy to be in harmony with the interests of the Muslim community in France at the moment, but I suspect we will very soon find occasions when they will be in contrast and we'll discover that Paris, just like London, is not inclined to take any notices of domestic Muslim opinion before it engages in the next Middle East policy step, whereas there are domestic lobbies in the U.S. government decision making processes which have much stronger impact.