IN LONDON RIOTS: MUSLIMS TACKLE LOOTERS AND BIGOTS

“British Muslims’ reaction to the riots 
should dispel any continued demonization in the media.”

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“When accused of terrorism we are Muslims,
when killed by looters, we become Asian”
a Muslim Londoner says.

Pyramidion

Robert Lambert

British Muslims played an important role in preventing the riots from being even worse than they were

There is a lively debate taking place in the UK media between left and right wing commentators as to the causes of the English riots, in which hundreds of shops and businesses have been looted.

However, both sides agree that the looting has been inexcusable. I hope both sides will also agree with me that Muslims have played an important role in helping to tackle the looting and preserve public safety. This would be an especially important acknowledgment if it came from those Islamophobic commentators who consistently denigrate Muslims.

“When accused of terrorism we are Muslims, when killed by looters, we become Asian”, a Muslim student explained to me.

He was commenting on the media reporting of the death of three young Muslims in Birmingham on Tuesday night. Like many other Muslims, they were bravely defending shops and communities as rioters went on a violent rampage of looting.

In recent days Muslim Londoners, Muslims from Birmingham, and Muslims in towns and cities around England have been at the forefront of protecting small businesses and vulnerable communities from looting. Having worked closely with Muslim Londoners, first as a police officer and more recently as a researcher, for the last ten years this commendable bravery comes as no surprise to me.

But their example of outstanding civic duty in support of neighbours is worth highlighting ~ especially when sections of the UK media are so quick to print negative headlines about Muslims on the flimsiest of pretexts.
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PRO-ACTIVE RESPONSE
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On Monday evening when London suffered its worst looting in living memory I watched as a well marshaled team of volunteers wearing green fluorescent security vests marked ‘East London Mosque‘ took to the streets of Tower Hamlets to help protect shops and communities from gangs of looters.

This was the most visible manifestation of their pro-active response to fast moving and well co-ordinated teams of looters. Less visible was the superb work of Muslim youth workers from Islamic Forum Europe who used the same communication tools as the looters to outwit and pre-empt them on the streets.

While senior Westminster politicians started to pack and rush back to London from foreign holidays I watched Lutfur Rahman, the Muslim mayor of Tower Hamlets, offering calm leadership and support in the street as gangs of looters were intercepted and prevented from stealing goods in his presence.

Most important to emphasize is the extent to which everyone in Tower Hamlets was a beneficiary of streetwise, smart Muslims acting swiftly to protect shops, businesses and communities against looters. It is often wrongly alleged that Muslims lack any sense of civic duty towards non-Muslims and especially towards the LGBTcommunity. I wish peddlers of that negative anti-Muslim message had been present to see how all citizens in Tower Hamlets were beneficiaries of Muslim civic spirit and bravery on Monday night.

I am not sure if the Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan was robbed of his bike by looters in Tower Hamlets or in another part of London as he cycled home from Hackney to Greenwich on Monday night, but even his incessant negative reporting of Muslims associated with the East London Mosque would not have excluded him from their neighbourly support had they been in the immediate vicinity to help him.

Gilligan reports that police were unable to offer him any advice other than to go home when he finally received an answer to his 999 call as a victim of a violent street robbery. London policing on Monday night was stretched as never before and Gilligan was one amongst hundreds of victims who had to fend for themselves as looters ran amok around the capital city.

In these unique circumstances the street skills of Muslim youth workers, who are routinely helping police to tackle violent gang crime and anti-social behaviour in Tower Hamlets, Walthamstow, Brixton and in other deprived neighbourhoods, were a key ingredient in filling the vacuum created by insufficient police numbers.

I first saw East London Mosque and Islamic Forum Europe street skills in action in 2005 when they robustly dispatched extremists from Al Muhajiroun who were in Whitechapel attempting to recruit youngsters into their hate filled group.

I saw the same skills in action in the same year when volunteers from the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Welfare House ousted violent supporters of Abu Hamza from the Finsbury Park Mosque.

More recently, Muslim bravery has been seen in Brixton when extremists spouting the latest manifestation of Al Muhajroun hatred were sent packing out of town.

In all these instances, and so many more, the brave Muslims involved have received no praise for their outstanding bravery and good citizenship, and instead faced a never ending barrage of denigration from journalists such as Gilligan, Melanie Phillips, Martin Bright…. sorry I won’t go on, it’s a long list!

 Sadly, many of the brave Muslims helping to keep their cities safe have not only grown used to denigration from media pundits but also faced cuts in government funding for their youth outreach work with violent gangs.

This is not as a result of widespread economic cuts caused by the recession, but because the government adopts the media view that they are ‘extremist‘. Street in Brixton is a case in point. Yesterday Dr Abdul Haqq Baker director of Street was forced to close a Street youth centre in Brixton as his reduced team of youth of workers struggled to keep pace with the task of tackling gang violence and its role in rioting and looting.
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CONFRONTING EXTREMISM

Significantly, the same potent mixture of Muslim street skills and bravery was evident last summer when the Islamophobic English Defence League (EDL) began to prepare for a violent demonstration in Whitechapel. On that occasion police commended the skills of Muslim youth workers who helped reduce tension and manage anger towards the EDL.

Two weeks ago, under the banner United East End neighbours of all faiths and none gathered at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel to express solidarity with their Muslim neighbours who are the target of another provocative English Defence League demonstration planned for 3 September. It is no co-incidence that Anders Breivik found common cause with the EDL.

The EDL regards the East London Mosque as the hub of the Muslim extremism it purports to oppose. Regrettably, EDL’s hate-filled analysis of Muslims is based on the work of mainstream media commentators who should now reflect on the unintended if not unforeseeable consequences of their Islamophobic discourse.

It is also worthy of comment that Muslim bravery during this outbreak of looting has taken place during Ramadan when Muslims are fasting ~ without food or water ~ from sunrise to sunset. This is a hard enough regime when relaxing, but when taking part in dangerous operations against looters, it is worthy of special reward ~ no doubt something their religion caters for.

Today, as Muslims in Tower Hamlets and around the country continue to work with their neighbours to repair damaged shops and to restore public safety, it is important I conclude this article by paying special tribute to Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir, the three typically brave Birmingham Muslims who were killed while defending their neighbourhood on Tuesday night.

I pray their legacy will be a wider appreciation of good Muslim citizenship, a reduction of media anti-Muslim denigration, and the elimination of EDL anti-Muslim intimidation and violence.     

Robert Lambert is the co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre and is a member of the EC Expert Panel on Radicalization. Prior to retiring from the Metropolitan Police in 2007, Robert was co-founder and head of the Muslim Contact Unit.

Friends and locals paying tribute to the three victims/heroes.

HEROES OF LONDON RIOTS ~ 
MUSLIMS, SIKHS, SOMALIS

By Cristina Odone
Source: The Telegraph (UK)

August 12, 2011

The Muslims, Poles, Turks and Somalis have shown up the natives during the riots.

In Southall, west London, a crowd of turbaned Sikh men stood guard outside their temples last Tuesday night. Some held swords, others hockey sticks as they defied the looters to approach. None dared.

Over in Whitechapel, rioters were held back by 1,500 Muslim men ~ mostly Bengali, but also Somalis ~ emerging from the mosque after evening prayers.

In Ealing, Monika Gnoinska, a Pole who came here 20 years ago, and her daughter Agneska, 27, decided that they couldn’t stand by and “watch these gangs wreck the country”. Armed with brooms and dust-pans, they joined their eastern European neighbours in a collective clean-up operation: “The street was full,” Monika said, “and everyone was saying, ‘We work hard, and we’re grateful to Britain for what it’s done for us. We won’t allow any more nonsense.’ ”

Turks in Dalston, Poles in Ealing, and Kurds in Haringey stood up to the thieving thugs at night, then spent the day helping repair the damage.

Across the country, ethnic communities have emerged as the heroes of the week’s riots ~ and, in the case of the three Muslim youths who were killed as they defended their neighbourhood in Birmingham, its martyrs. They have shown themselves to be not just as law-abiding as the Anglo-Saxons, but far more inspiring.

For many Britons, who have long looked down on the newcomers, or mocked them for their Borat values, this will come as a surprise ~ probably an uncomfortable one. The burgeoning immigrant community has been caricatured as anti-gay, anti-women, and dangerously intolerant. The sight of Polish Catholics, Punjabi Sikhs or Muslim Turks has filled liberal hearts with fears of social polarization, and of religion intruding into the public square.

Traditionalists suspect that the Muslim influx, in particular, threatens to destroy the already fragile hold of our Judaeo-Christian traditions: George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has warned the Government against taking in groups who fail to “understand our Christian heritage”.

The response to the riots should humble these skeptics. As a cluster of youths stood guard outside the mosque in Whitechapel, Josie Ensor, a Daily Telegraph reporter, asked if they had been moved to defend their own people. They shook their head: they wanted to protect their country, not just their community.

Their patriotism, which echoes that of the Poles in Ealing, is striking, especially in an area where the BNP and English Defence League boast a growing presence. But their actions teach us other lessons, too. Coverage of the riots has repeatedly focused on the damage to the “community”. 

This is ironic, given the total disregard for neighbours and local businesses that the mob has shown: there’s no such thing as community for the owner of the deli in Dalston who has witnessed the destruction of her family-run shop and the terrorizing of her elderly father.

Social ties of duty, respect, trust ~ if they still existed ~ have gone up in smoke. The only community the rioters belong to is a virtual one, which allows them to communicate the location and timing of their next rampage through websites and mobile phones.

Yet in the tight-knit enclaves peopled by Kurds, Sikhs, Poles and others, a strong sense of community does survive.

Everyone knows each other and what they’re up to; and everyone shares a clear belief system. It is an environment that can prove distinctly uncomfortable for non~conformists: passing judgment is as much part of this existence as halal butchery or carp at Christmas.

But it also provides an invaluable safety net that makes the state’s assistance redundant. It is mutual obligations, not government incentives or punishments, that motivates members of such communities. Dependence on the state is largely seen as unacceptable.

Equally importantly, the alternatives to the family so cherished by liberals have never taken root: marriage is the model they live by and aspire to.

Divorce is almost nil,

single motherhood ditto;

extended families living together are routine.

Strong immigrant families support their children, but also supply them with a lifelong moral compass.

Many of those young people probably recognized, among the masked figures setting cars on fire and smashing shops, their schoolmates and neighbours.

Perhaps they attend the same clubs or cinemas as the hooded boys and girls running riot.

They may even have the same failing grades, and struggle under the same burden of illiteracy.

Yet these children are not morally illiterate.

They know that looting is wrong.

They also know that crime is punished: not necessarily by the police, but by parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins and neighbours.

In the familiar surroundings of Ealing, Southall, and Birmingham, social stigma turns rule-breakers into pariahs. Over the past few days, immigrant communities have challenged the British way of life. They have dared their hosts to revive their own moribund communities, to rebuild broken families, and to adhere to a moral code. Can the natives measure up?

This video shows Tariq Jahan, the father of an innocent peace loving man, Haroon Jahan who was killed in what has been described as a murderous hit-and-run attack in Birmingham on Tuesday night.
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Mr. Jahan said he was helping one of the injured men, one of two brothers, Shezad Ali & Abdul Musavir, who also both tragically died, when somebody told him his own son was on the ground behind him.  Mr. Jahan is in no way "Asian".  He sounds British born and bred and looks like a solid Middle Eastern man.  As mentioned above, when Muslims are heroes or victims they are "Asian" but for everything else "terrorist" or "potential terrorist".