The spotlight was on the Muslims, as if they alone were to blame for a lack of harmony in society

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was showing a group of Eastern European visitors around Manchester. They were the guests of the City Council, and they came from one of the small Baltic countries that had recently gained their independence from the USSR. One of these visitors turned to me and complimented me on the tolerance of Britain. Asking him what he meant, he waved his arm at the crowds of passers-by and said, "Look at all these Muslim women, just walking about the streets. In my country, this would not be allowed." He then went on to explain that he felt the British were able to tolerate difference because they felt secure due to their long democratic traditions and history as an independent island nation. If his theory was correct, then Britain's confidence has been shaken recently.

Under attack

The month of Ramadan has seen British Muslims under attack in the media and in the streets. It kicked off when Blackburn MP Jack Straw went public about his dislike of the face veil, calling it "a visible symbol of separation and difference." These few remarks unleashed a flood tide of anti-Muslim sentiment, which Tariq Ramadan has described as part of a generalized fostering of a "them versus us" attitude between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is clear from Straw's explanatory remarks to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph: "It was done out of respect for Islam — out of affection for the Muslim community ... but of concern too, especially about their future in our society".

Many Muslims in Blackburn and elsewhere in the UK are shocked that, despite that Muslims have lived in Blackburn for half a century, many of them having been born and bred here, their MP is still categorizing 30 percent of his constituents as outsiders with an uncertain future.

It is a classic example of blaming the victim. A number of recent reports indicate that intolerance, racism, and extremism are far more widespread among non-Muslim communities than among Muslims in the UK. Other reports detail the many barriers, disadvantages, and inequalities faced by Muslims in key policy areas such as the labor market. Despite these reports, Straw seemed to think that the issue worth talking about was the decision of perhaps one percent of Muslim women in the UK to wear the full veil.

Jack Straw was supported by his colleagues including Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman, and Tony Blair, who described the veil as "a mark of separation." Shadow Home Secretary David Davis also chimed in criticizing the Muslims for "imposing a voluntary apartheid." A week later, the whole veil debate received fresh impetus when Phil Woolas, the minister with responsibility for community cohesion, called for a veiled class assistant in Dewsbury to be dismissed on the grounds that by wearing the veil she had put herself in a position where she can't do her job. He argued that the veil as an assertion of identity "can create fear and resentment" among non-Muslims, leading to discrimination and benefiting the British National Party (BNP). The views of the politicians were quickly taken up in the media. The Daily Express conducted a poll as part of a campaign to ban the veil, which revealed that 98 percent of readers wanted to ban the veil "to safeguard racial harmony."

Wave of Islamaphobic attacks

This was then quickly followed by a government proposal, later rejected by the House of Lords, to compel faith schools to take up to 25 percent of pupils from different faiths, in a bid that was clearly targeted at Muslim schools following criticisms a year ago that Muslim schools posed a threat to our "coherence as a nation" by the Chief Inspector of Schools in England Ian Bell. Yet another announcement reported that the government is asking lecturers and university staff to spy on Asian-looking and Muslim students for suspected involvement in Islamic extremism.

Thus the debate quickly widened from being about the veil to being about suspicion of Muslims generally living in "parallel communities." If there was an incident to portray Muslims in a negative light, the media seized on it, such as the Muslim taxi cab driver who refused to take a blind woman on the grounds that her dog was "unclean." In contrast, the arrest of a BNP candidate for Lancashire for having the largest cache of chemical weapons ever found in the UK only made the local press. Even when the BBC admitted bias against Christians, it was somehow twisted to imply favoritism to Muslims with the deputy director-general being asked whether the BBC favors Islam and whether he would ever employ a newsreader in a veil.

The spotlight was firmly on the Muslims, as if they and they alone were to blame for a lack of harmony in society. But what about other communities who choose to live close together, such as the Jews of Stamford Hill or the Chinese of China Town? Why is it that Muslims are singled out for doing the same thing? What about the phenomenon of "white flight" —white families moving out when other people move in — which Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) identifies as the fundamental cause of segregation in the UK?

Blaming the Muslims also runs contrary to a Lancaster University research project that found that Muslim children in Burnley are far more tolerant of other faiths and races than white children. Burnley is just down the road from Jack Straw's constituency and the same place that the chemical weapons hoard was found. Surely Jack should be raising his voice about these issues? Or maybe he should be concerned about the Joseph Rowntree Trust survey in April that found that 25 percent of the white population in Britain as a whole were considering voting for the racist BNP?

It would have been greatly appreciated by Britain's beleaguered Muslims if the politicians and media had at least condemned the wave of Islamaphobic attacks that inevitably followed their official pronouncements. The BNP was jubilant, releasing a mail shot including a photo of a veiled woman. A number of Muslim women were shouted at in the street and intimidated; some had their scarves forcibly removed. The number of attacks on mosques and homes has risen, a 53-year-old imam was beaten up, and there was even a drive-by shooting in Oxbridge where a family were shot at while out shopping.

The most disconcerting thing about all these shenanigans is that they felt orchestrated. If this was an intentionally manufactured crisis, then the responsibility for the upsurge in hate crime lies squarely at Labour's door. Was it because they were piqued that many solid Labour-voting Muslims deserted them in the last elections because of their disgust with Labour foreign policy? Or was it because they wanted to capitalize on the upsurge in support for the BNP — always a dangerous but popular card for politicians to play. I sincerely hope not. But if it just came about by coincidence, then surely we must learn from its consequences of the need to choose our words carefully, to avoid fanning the flames of bigotry, or we risk losing the cherished tolerance that our Baltic visitor so admired. And that is something I think we would all regret.