UK meetings of imams and Muslim community activists

UK: I want to say about time, but reading Bunglawala column it looks like a new way to wrap up old complaints and perceived grievances in a new set of clothing to try and fool people. The tired mantra of its because of foreign policy is getting ripped in the comments. But this part bugged me.

Neoconservative writers along with some secular Muslims have tried to downplay the impact of these policies. On Tuesday on Cif, Asim Siddiqui queried why "Islamists" in the UK - if they were so troubled by the suffering of Muslims overseas - were not marching to demonstrate their opposition to what is happening in Darfur. "Where is their outrage at the 400,000 Muslims slaughtered in Darfur? ... It is nowhere to be seen because the Darfurians have been massacred by fellow Muslims, not by the west ... Such is the moral bankruptcy of this [Islamist] ideology." I would suggest that the answer to Asim's question is surely that ordinary Britons (Muslim or otherwise) have a far greater incentive to protest if they believe that it will actually help towards influencing the resolution of a conflict. It is understandable why people would seek to influence the actions of our own government in the UK when it is directly involved in a conflict overseas. It is surely also understandable that if a conflict overseas has little or nothing to do with our own government in the UK, as in the Chechnya or Darfur conflicts, then people will, in general, be far less motivated to protest.

The Mohammed cartoons had nothing to do with the UK but he and other groups praised the papers for not running them and protesting the cartoons/Denmark. But Darfur is mainly Arab Muslims vs Black Muslims so groups like the O.I.C come to the defense of Sudan and others saying it is an imperialist/zionist plot against Sudan pointing out the genocide.

Nothing new will come from these meetings except new ways to deflect blame.

Two other writers blast the its all about Iraq meme that come from Muslim groups on the reason of radicalised Islamists.

Stemming the tide of terror
Judea Pearl July 6, 2007 4:00 PM
A sense of grievance over Iraq is part of the story behind Islamist terror, but it is distorted and exaggerated - which Muslim leaders must counter.

The Bosnian connection
Brendan O'Neill July 6, 2007 7:00 PM
Far from being radicalised by the failure of the west to act, large numbers of Muslims were radicalised by western intervention in the Balkans.