By Yamin Zakaria

Blair may be drunk with imperial arrogance riding on the tails of George Bush, but his deputy John Prescott seems to be sober, as demonstrated by his recent comments about Bush. If Bush was present, he might have said: Yo Bush, you and your policy is crap. Perhaps, John Prescott is preparing to give the Labour party a new face, because a new leadership contest may be looming; and criticising Bush is perhaps the first step in distancing from Blair’s foreign policy, particularly the unpopular war in Iraq.

Just prior to the war in Lebanon, the Christian fundamentalist Blair allegedly got another divine inspiration to aid his ongoing holy crusade (“war on terror”), against the Muslim infidels! Thus, he made the holy proclamation of promoting the moderates, short for moderate Muslims. Who are these moderates? It is easy to deduce that: if Blair wants the moderates to be the voice of the Muslims and Islam, it means they comply with his interests and his foreign policies in the Islamic world. Conversely, extremists are those who oppose Blair’s foreign policies in the Islamic world.

According this type of reasoning: a devout but apolitical Muslim makes a very good moderate, where as a politically aware, astute, vocal but a secular Muslim or a nominal Muslim can be an extremist. Non-Muslims like the charismatic George Galloway would have been called an extremist, if he converted to become a nominal Muslim. Therefore, the classification of being a moderate or an extremist is primarily dependent upon how you relate, to Blair’s foreign policy in the Islamic world.

Naturally, the moderates function well as political rodents; they are policy carriers for the likes of Bush and Blair. However, unlike rodents they are unable to infect the masses, because the masses have already been inoculated against such types of vermin. They recognise the moderates as simply echoing the voice of Blair, justifying his murderous foreign policy that is composed of state-terrorism and mass murder of Muslims. They see the voice of the moderates only gets amplified when it coincides with Blair’s policy.

The moderates claim to be diplomats, trying to influence Blair’s hostile foreign policy. In reality, it is the moderates that are used as a tool to promote the murderous foreign policy of Bush-Blair to the Muslim masses. Having Iftar (breaking the fast in Ramadan) and photo shots taken with the murderers sends that kind of message and it is far from an open dialogue. Blair and Bush stood alone in supporting the recent Israeli carnage proving how wrong the moderates have been. Even, Blair has recognised the failure of the moderates; the recent poll showed that substantial section of the Muslim youth in Britain, view 7/7 as retaliation for the horrendous crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Lebanon now added to that growing list.

Therefore, Blair is gradually replacing the old moderates with a new group of radical-moderates, the Sufi Muslim Council (SMC). It was unheard of until it emerged in the mainstream media [1], around July 2006, and suddenly their members are giving interviews on BBC Newsnight and other media outlets, as the new voice of Muslims in the UK. This is another classic example of manufacturing a ‘Muslim’ group, who is going to be the voice for Muslims in the UK, regardless of the grass root support; such manufactured groups will also bring about further division of the Muslims, echoing the policy of the British Raj – divide and conquer.

The overall spiritual head of SMC is the notorious Hisham Kabbani who heads the Islamic Supreme Council of America (ISCA). He is known for his open support for Bush and Blair’s foreign policy, in recent times he has even dared to show support for Israeli occupation of Palestine. Concurrently he scorns anyone resisting the Anglo-US-Israeli aggression. Judging by some of his claims one can question his sanity; apparently he has converted Hillary Clinton, Princess Diana and Prince Charles to embrace Islam. More likely it is Hisham Kabbani that converted to neo-con fascism. This is corroborated by the fact that the self-confessed neo-con, Zeyno Baran [2] of the rightwing Hudson Institute, is one of the main contributors to Hisham Kabbani’s website.

As stated earlier, the scale of a moderate is measured by how closely one is aligned to the policies of Blair-Bush and their neo-con gang. Greater the convergence, the more extremist these moderates are in their views, such that one is unable to distinguish them from their masters, for whom they are carrying the policy, like the coolies of the British Raj. Hence the term extremist moderate or militant moderate is not an oxymoron as many might assume.

These extremist-moderates attempt to uphold their Islamic credentials by giving a liberal ‘interpretation’ (misinterpretation) of Islamic texts in order to justify their alliance with those who hate Islam and are busy murdering Muslims. Hence, their position is not dictated by their understanding of Islam rather it is the opposite; they mould Islam to justify their political position which they have adopted in the first place. So call them traitors, Zionist-Muslims, neo-con Muslims, neo-Coolies, they all point to the same trait of treachery. Listed below are some key points pushed by these extremist-moderates that illustrates their treacherous nature.

a) Oppose political ‘Islam’.

There is no such thing as political Islam, because Islam is inherently political, it has detailed rules governing all aspects of society and how to conduct international relationships. Hence, there is ISLAM and there is the deficient Islam without the politics: depoliticised Islam. Where individual focuses exclusively on their individual actions and remain passive and/or ignorant to the significant events affecting the Islamic world. The real reason why they oppose political Islam is because, their masters want to pacify the Muslims, make them docile.

b) Combat Extremism (Radicalisation).

These extremist-moderates are not referring to the extremism of Blair and Bush, but those who are resisting their aggression. As an example, human bombers are extremists, but not an F16 fighter pilot that is capable of erasing cities, like the Israelis demonstrated recently in Lebanon. It is extremist when western civilians are killed, but when the West kills much larger number of Muslims it is simply called collateral damages. The so-called terrorists are extremists but the primary state terrorists are not. Combating extremism in the current political climate means opposing those Muslims who are intellectually and physically resisting the current Western agenda of re-colonisation of the Islamic world.

What is even more perplexing is that radicalisation, which means resisting Western and Israeli aggression, is blamed on the Islamic groups and activists. As Blair also claimed, the Muslims had a false sense of grievance; it is all a figment of their wild imagination. Radicalisation is entirely the product of radical preachers making ‘radical’ interpretation of Islamic texts.

Hence, radicalisation has nothing to do with invading and mass murdering in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and Palestine. When the Lebanese, the Palestinians and the Iraqis see their loved ones get blown to pieces by F16s, they should be thankful to these benevolent liberators bringing democracy and freedom. If you differ from this position you have been radicalised with a false sense of grievance!

c) It is just ‘foreign policy’, and not mass murder.

For these extremist-moderates, the mass murder of Muslims is just foreign policy, like “collateral damages”, another technical term to hide behind. Whilst killing of western subjects through retaliation is simply murder and terrorism. One of their spokesman said he could not understand why Muslims respond violently as he also disagrees with the foreign policy. I mean, is it really moral and rational for anyone to respond violently to a violent action!

When the violent foreign policy is blamed, the media fascists with the rightwing elements frequently broadcast that they will not be dictated to, as to how they should implement their foreign policy. Of course not, because these neo-fascists want the ‘freedom’ to dictate to the world, mass murder, theft, colonisation and invasion of oil-rich regions based on lies or what is conveniently called faulty intelligence. It is strange how people talk about others dictating to them when they are ones who is imposing their will on them in the first place.

d) ‘Innocent’ civilians

The notion of innocent and guilty in war (international relationship) is invalid, because guilt and innocence is determined by a set of laws that have authority over the subjects. International laws are not laws but mutually agreed conventions, otherwise the US would be facing legal charges for its heinous crimes of attacking Iraq and many other nations around the world. Therefore, the term innocent civilian is wrong and meaningless.

The classification of civilians could be in the following two categories: ‘combatant-civilians’ and ‘non-combatant-civilians’. The former has further two sub-categories: those who are actively supporting the war, for example certain media outlets, private weapons manufacturers, and those who are tacitly supporting the war by their silence. As for those who actively oppose the war are the non-combatant-civilians who are likely to be the true collateral damages in the conflict along with children and those without unconscious like the mentally handicapped.

The moderates say it is wrong to kill civilians, even when the civilians in the West and Israel are collectively and legally endorse attacking our civilians by re-electing regimes which are actively engaged in killing our civilians. So what alternatives do the extremist-moderates provide as means of self-defence of our civilians? Not much.

Islam does prohibit the killing of all civilians, who are not aiding the war (non-combatant-civilians), but it does permit the killing of civilians in general but ONLY in retaliation and this is exercised cautiously only to deter the enemy from further aggression against our civilians. So, imagine the Lebanese were armed with fighter planes, would it be wrong for them to drop the bombs on Tel-Aviv and Haifa to deter further Israeli casual bombings of its cities. Anyone with a degree of commonsense and sincerity will concur but not the extremist-moderates, who as expected were hardly vocal when the Lebanese civilians were butchered and if they were vocal, they could not be heard.

e) One-sided condemnation.

The moderates are infamous for issuing one-sided condemnation against those Muslims retaliating against the violence of neo-colonialist forces. Even some of the Imams from the school of neo-moderates, were brought out of their caves to pass ‘fatwas’ in favour of Blair. Suddenly they were engaging in politics, after ignoring and lecturing the Muslims not to participate in politics in the first place. As expected the moderates issued swift condemnation for 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7, after sleeping over the atrocities in the Islamic world for decades. Blaming the victim for resisting, whilst ignoring the much larger initial violence perpetrated by the aggressor - is unjust by any standards.

While the moderates issued one-sided condemnation of Muslims, by the same standards none had the intelligence and the courage to demand from the local Jewish community to condemn the wonton Israeli violence against the Palestinians and Lebanese. The extremist-moderates line up to call British Muslims terrorists for aiding the Palestinian resistance but remain mute when the British Jewish Zionists aid the Israeli army in the ethnic cleansing process that began in 1948. It is complex for the media and the moderates to understand why Muslims in UK aid the Muslims in Palestine or Iraq but they have no problem in grasping and justifying when the Jewish Zionists from all corners the world come to Israel and murder the Palestinians and confiscate their lands.