Clutching At Straws
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw addressed a packed Exam Schools last Friday evening on the topic of 'Engagement with the Islamic World.' Amid heavy security and police presence, Straw gave the lecture - organised by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies - to an audience of nearly two hundred people, including a raft of international ambassadors, the national press and more one hundred other observers. In a little over half an hour he spoke of the importance of religion in British society, the need for greater understanding between religions and the key role that faith should play in the future of international affairs.
Speaking from the background of his own Blackburn constituency, which itself has twenty-three mosques and over twenty-five thousand Muslims, Straw declared that, "Knowledge must be put in place of ignorance, and understanding in place of suspicion." He also affirmed that Britain remains an inescapably religious nation, referring to the oddity of his own duty in swearing in Bishops of the Church of England during his time as Home Secretary. Moreover, he rebutted the image of religion, and most specifically Islam, as being a force of oppression: "Britain has nothing to fear from allowing Islam to exercise a positive, civilising influence on the West."
However, the Foreign Secretary was keen to point out that in celebrating the diversity of religious values, Britain should not "turn a blind eye" to elements of faith that compromise what he referred to as the "three core values" of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. He cited forced marriage and gender discrimination as specific examples of why "each community has a unique responsibility to attack extremists who act in their name", and also suggested that fundamentalism is largely derived from a perceived threat to one community from another.
The audience, however, was not altogether agreeable to Straw's overtures. In asserting the West's positive attitude to Islam, his suggestion that the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan had been fought in defence of Muslims was met with vocal discontent from the audience. One female observer shouted out that more Iraqi children had been killed in the past month from Western bombs than those who lost their lives on September 11th. Iraq certainly proved to be a point of contention during the period of audience questioning after his speech, but Straw denied that the sanctions on Iraq had prevented food aid being supplied, saying that bombing was being carefully targeted at "the removal of weapons of mass destruction."
He also brushed aside a number of questions on the alleged ill-treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay's 'Camp X-Ray', referring to a report by a government-sponsored investigation into conditions at the camp. His denial that Britain had been uncritical of Pakistani President Musharraf and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon led to a number of outbursts from audience members, although Straw's unflapping response was simply that Britain remained committed to "active dialogue" as the primary means of developing relations between the West and Islam.
31st Jan 2002