"It is already starting to happen - and
unless the Government changes the way it treats the
so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will
continue."
For someone with such strong and
uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly
gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on
Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a
Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South
America, and attended a madrassa there.
"But Islamic instruction was very
different in the 1950s, when I was at school," he says.
"There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of
violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful."
Dr Sookhdeo's family emigrated to England
when he was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at
university, he converted to Christianity. "I had simply
seen it as the white man's religion, the religion of the
colonialists and the oppressors - in a very similar way,
in fact, to the way that many Muslims see Christianity
today.
"Leaving Islam was not easy. According
to the literal interpretation of the Koran, the
punishment for apostasy is death - and it actually is
punished by death in some Middle Eastern states. "It
wasn't quite like that here," he says, "although it was
traumatic in some ways."
Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam,
doing a PhD at London University on the religion. He is
currently director of the Institute for the Study of
Islam and Christianity. He also advises the Army on
security issues related to Islam.
Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted
that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would
involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction
was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.
So his claim that, in the next decade,
the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated
into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself
to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr
Sookhdeo has proved his prescience.
"The Government, and Tony Blair, the
Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the
nature of Islam," he insists. "Tony Blair
unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in
an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had 'read
through the Koran twice' and that he kept it by his
bedside.
"He thought he was saying something which
showed how seriously he took Islam. But most Muslims
thought it was a joke, if not an insult. Because, of
course, every Muslim knows that you cannot read the
Koran through from cover to cover and understand it.
The chapters are not written to be read
in that way. Indeed, after the first chapter, the
chapters of the Koran are ordered according to their
length, not according to their content or chronology:
the longest chapters are first, the shorter ones are at
the end.
"You need to know which passage was
revealed at what period and in what time in order to be
able to understand it - you cannot simply read it from
beginning to end and expect to learn anything at
all.
"That is one reason why it takes so long
to be able to read and understand the Koran: the meaning
of any part of it depends on a knowledge of its context
- a context that is not in the Koran itself."
The Prime Minister's ignorance of Islam,
Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his
unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does
indeed seem as if the Government's policy towards
radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes
concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and
relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony
Blair's Government will then turn into something
resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.
Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement
with that. "Yes - and it is a very big mistake. Look at
what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew
about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew
that London was becoming the centre for Islamic
terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet
nothing was done.
"The whole approach towards Muslim
militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that
approach does not work - yet it is still being followed.
For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New
Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly
available in Muslim bookshops.
"It calls for the killing of Jews and
Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the
infidels and for warfare against them. The Government
has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of
that book.
"Why not? Government ministers have
promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the
glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about
this book, which blatantly does both."
Perhaps the explanation is just that they
do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the
problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony
Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of
their own secular outlook.
They simply do not realise how seriously
Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard
themselves as locked in mortal combat with
secularism.
"For example, one of the fundamental
notions of a secular society is the moral importance of
freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is
not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether
to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of
the religion, because they are all divinely ordained.
God has laid down the law, and man must obey.
'Islamic clerics do not believe in a
society in which Islam is one religion among others in a
society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They
believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is
their aim to achieve this.
"That is why they do not believe in
integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid
out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental
rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do
not integrate.
"Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a
particular area until you are a majority in that area,
so that the institutions of the local community come to
reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be
Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there
will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked
women, and so on."
That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being
followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas
which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will
be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for
Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the
claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or
"violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia
law.
"There's already a Sharia Law Council for
the UK. The Government has already started making
concessions: it has changed the law so that there are
sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.
"Some Muslims are now pressing to be
allowed four wives: they say it is part of their
religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives
is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim
men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then
marry a fourth time - and stay married, in sharia law,
to all four.
"The more fundamentalist clerics think
that it is only a matter of time before they will
persuade the Government to concede on the issue of
sharia law. Given the Government's record of
capitulating, you can see why they believe that."
Dr Sookhdeo's vision of a relentless
battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to
reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the
vast majority of the interactions between the two
communities.
"Well, it isn't me who says Islam is at
war with secularisation," he says. "That's how Islamic
clerics describe the situation."
But isn't it true that most Muslims who
live in theocratic states want to get out of them as
quickly as possible and live in a secular country such
as Britain or America? And that most Muslims who come to
Britain adopt the values of a liberal, democratic,
tolerant society, rather than insisting on the
inflexible rules of their religion?
"You have to distinguish between ordinary
Muslims and their self-appointed leaders," explains Dr
Sookhdeo. "I agree that the best hope for our collective
future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up
here have accepted the secular nature of the British
state and society, the division between religion and
politics, and the importance of allowing people to
choose freely how they will live.
"But that is not how most of the clerics
talk. And, more significantly, it is not how the
'community leaders' whom the Government has decided
represent the Muslim community think either.
"Take, for example, Tariq Ramadan, whom
the Government has appointed as an adviser because
ministers think he is a 'community leader'. Ramadan
sounds, in public, very moderate. But in reality, he has
some very extreme views. He attacks liberal Muslims as
'Muslims without Islam'. He is affiliated to the violent
and uncompromising Muslim Brotherhood.
"He calls the education in the state
schools of the West 'aggression against the Islamic
personality of the child'. He has said that 'the Muslim
respects the laws of the country only if they do not
contradict any Islamic principle'. He has added that
'compromising on principles is a sign of fear and
weakness'."
So what's the answer? What should the
Government be doing? "First, it should try to engage
with the real Muslim majority, not with the
self-appointed 'community leaders' who don't actually
represent anyone: they have not been elected, and the
vast majority of ordinary Muslims have nothing to do
with them.
"Second, the Government should say no to
faith-based schools, because they are a block to
integration. There should be no compromise over
education, or over English as the language of education.
The policy of political multiculturalism should be
reversed.
"The hope was that it would to ensure
separate communities would soften at the edges and
integrate. But the opposite has in fact happened:
Islamic communities have hardened. There is much less
integration than there was for the generation that
arrived when I did. There will be much less in the
future if the present trend continues.
"Finally, the Government should make it
absolutely clear: we welcome diversity, we welcome
different religions - but all of them have to accept the
secular basis of British law and society. That is a
non-negotiable condition of being here.
"If the Government does not do all of
those things then I fear for the future, because Islamic
communities within Britain will form a state within a
state. Religion will occupy an ever-larger place in our
collective political life. And, speaking as a religious
man myself, I fear that outcome."
