Muslims in the Media

The defamation of the Muslim community in Ireland by the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune. By Scott Millar

Dr Nooh Al Kaddo, director of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, knew he had to act quickly when he read last Sunday's newspapers. They described a community he did not recognise.

The frontpage Sunday Tribune interview with Sheikh Dr Shaheed Satardien, of the Supreme Muslim Council of Ireland, described Irish Muslim youths in the grip of fundamentalists preaching a dogma of hate. Satardien even pondered the need to restrict them from travelling abroad to military training camps. Moderate Muslim leaders, he said, where "in denial".

The Sunday Independent's security correspondent Jim Cusack's story described a community that harboured men plotting international terrorist outrages from their safe houses in the Dublin suburbs, even using flights from Knock airport to practice their attacks.

How could Al kaddo, who has committed years of his life to representing Irish Muslims, not have noticed that his community had turned so decisively against the values of their home country? Or was there something else worrying and sinister afoot? Could two established Sunday broadsheets have so little concern for the complexities of Irish community relations that they were willing to spread fear to improve depressed August newspaper circulations?

Al kaddo called around the myriad organisations that have, since the 1980s, been trying to aid the integration of Ireland's approximately 40,000 Muslims into a largely welcoming wider society. After talking to Muslim youth groups, students and religious leaders of all sects around the country, he had to face the sad reality. Not of a community that has embraced extremism in the face of international outrages, but of an Irish media seemingly egging on the replication of British problems in Ireland.

Al kaddo, talking to the Village after an emergency meeting of eight Irish Muslim groups at the Clonskeagh mosque to discuss the media coverage, said: "Of course we must be aware of the threat of fundamentalism, but we have been working for many years with the community and the authorities at grass-roots level on minimising this problem. This publicity stunt in no way gives a reflection of the true nature of our community."

He added: "No doubt there is anger and frustration about what people see, these things can create unusual acts from the youth. But don't forget we are here in Ireland. Ireland is a neutral country that has never had these problems with these countries, of colonising them or being colonised. We do advise our youth that if they must do something it is take their case to the people [of Ireland] to show people what is going on in Lebanon and elsewhere is not right".

Many Muslim community leaders feel that Satardien's comments where provoked by a sense of being rebuffed in his attempts to establish an umbrella council of Muslim groups. Satardien had come to Ireland from South Africa four years ago. "Why, if he had such an opinion, did he not come to us, to the youth leaders? He is not part of the society here; in the mosque we see him maybe twice a year. Why now, at this time, which is not right, did he say these things? We would support him if this really was the case," says Al kaddo

On the Sunday Independent "exclusive", Al kaddo says: "The article is so bad, it is so without knowledge. It seems to take information from any anti-Islamic source, or I don't know where the information comes from."

When contacted by the Village to respond to Al kaddo's and other Irish Muslim leaders' dismissal of his comments, Satardien said: "They are part of the problem, they sweep it under the carpet. They will not face up to the problem till we end up with a Spain or London [bombings] here."

Referring to the Irish Muslim leaders, he said: "They are half-baked clerics and DIY Imams. They are all Muslim Brotherhood and are influenced by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin." He said he had come across numerous incidents of radicalism in the Irish Muslim community but could not go into detail and that he knew of people who had prayed for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the dead leader of al Qaida in Iraq, and of youths who where disturbing the Protocols of Zion, a 19th-century anti-Semitic text. Satardien says he is a South African of Arab and Indian extraction with a grandparent from Co Kildare.

Mostahfiz Gani is the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland youth coordinator. Born and bred in London, he has seen the impact demonisation of young Muslims by sections of the media and political establishments has had. "There are undoubtedly issues of concern in the UK. Some Muslim youths feel ineffective and unable to do things. They feel demonised and marginalised. Some feel the only way they can express themselves is through demonstrations and getting angry. We are saying there is a process. Everyone must have a way of expressing themselves when they see injustice – we are saying that is not wrong, that is a noble thing and the means are available if you open the right doors to express opinions... All we are asking is that Irish Muslims are given the same opportunity as everyone else. It is only if those doors are closed that extremism can breed."

According to the young community worker different community dynamics are in operation in Ireland than in Britain: "Personally, when I came to Ireland with my wife and kid, we found our neighbours very welcoming. To be honest, I felt more welcomed here than I did in the UK and I'm a Brit. it is very different here. Firstly, it is a smaller community and lots of people came as professionals or students, not as migrant workers. Over there you have 1.7 to two million people, you have ghettos. The British empire and all that baggage. Ireland doesn't have that baggage. In fact, Irish people have been very supportive to many Muslim issues and causes and Muslims are very appreciative of that." However he fears the impact that media reports can have: "Articles like those at the weekend can give an impression to the youth that the door is closed. They will not see that this is just papers, they could take the view that this is how Irish people view them, that employers or teachers might be effected by these articles. These articles are irresponsible because it can lead to closing the door and can lead to marginalisation, and that is what we do not want. The way to express that anger is to open up the political process, access to the media to allow people to express themselves, to give them that channel. And then it can be funnelled to give proper expression."

He added: "It is a self-fulfilling prophecy – the more these stories come the more they will feel demonised... the fact is our kids are far from these things. They feel angry, annoyed, they are emotional. But we give them avenues to discuss these things and when that is done they are not going to go to X, Y and Z lunatic person. I remember when I was 15, 16 and Bosnia happened, the massacres. I was very upset. I remember crying all night in the mosque. It was happening in front of the UN. You could see double standards, these issues have built up in Britain and that is amongst two million people. Of all the hundreds of youths I've spoken with, drank with, ate with, I have not come across one kid that has gone to a training camp. This is just not happening." Gani is also dismissive of the reasons for Satardien's comments: "I would have him in the same bracket as the Omar Bakris and Abu Hamsas of this world – they are not serious in what they are saying but have their own personal agendas. He is jumping on the bandwagon of these stories in London, the Irish media is clutching at straws. It is almost as if, because there is no IRA anymore, they are looking at what is happening across the water and saying, 'Oh I wish that was happening here." Bakri and Hamsa, the 'Tottenham Ayatollah' and 'hook', respectively, are fundamentalists formerly highlighted by the British tabloid press.

It's not the first time that largely unsubstantiated stories concerning Ireland's Muslim community have made the headlines.

The Evening Herald alleged in May this year that the Afghan hunger strikers' protest was being coordinated by the Taliban. However, it is the Sunday Independent that has most extensively carried articles seeking to establish widespread links between Ireland's Muslim community and extremism.

In January 2005, the paper published letters pointing out inaccuracies and bias in a Sunday Independent Life magazine article, 'If you are a Muslim come into the parlour', by Mark Dooley. In the article, Dooley, referring to Dublin's two Muslim primary schools, stated that: "Nobody outside the Sunni Muslim community knows exactly what is being taught in the Islamic school." The paper was forced to accept that the school catered for children from both Sunni and Shia backgrounds and had a largely Irish teaching staff. Since then the paper ran a number of articles by Dooley on the threat of Muslim extremists in Ireland. Jim Cusack, Ruth Dudley Edwards and Eoghan Harris have also contributed articles on the subject in recent months. Already, all eight mosques in Ireland are under regular Garda surveillance. Muslim leaders have also stated they regard the monitoring of radicals within their community in conjunction with the Garda as a necessary security precaution. There have been a number of sustained connections made between Islamic extremists who have visited Ireland, but none yet that have concerned integrated members of the Irish Muslim community.

Ireland has a long association with Arab radicalism, and both wings of the IRA forged links with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in the early '70s. Some PLO members even settled here. For a time, the PLO and other Arab guerrilla movements swapped expertise and training with republicans. Although republicans maintain formal contacts with these secular liberation movements in the Middle East, they have largely been superseded by Islamists.

Three young women, representatives of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, who strongly oppose the spread of fundamentalism, are perturbed by the labelling of their community. Hajar Al Kaddo said: "If the Sunday Tribune wanted to now about the youth here they should have got in contact with us. This is us they were talking about. This is our home and, for most, it is our nationality. We love our country. Because of the claims of one publicist all this is questioned and we are feeling ostracised."

Nuara Bazama, whose parents are Irish and Libyan, is more concerned what wrong impression others may be receiving: "First of all I'm Irish. But I've just been in Libya for a month visiting my family there and now I come back and have to think, Oh my god has my grandfather here been reading this and thinking, 'Oh no my grandchild might have been visiting a training camp.'"

A brief history of Irish Muslims

Ireland's first Muslim institution was established in Dublin in 1959 to cater for the few Islamic students in the country. The growing community that now numbers nearly 40,000 has two primary schools and resource centres throughout the country. The make-up of the community differs greatly from Britain with most Irish Muslim families originating from north Africa and the Middle East rather than the Indian subcontinent. The vast majority of Ireland's Muslims are Sunni, with less than 2,000 Shiite, but there is little friction between the communities. Members of the two sects regularly pray in each others' mosques. Community leaders say most Irish Muslims are well-educated, from middle-class backgrounds and are employed in the professions, although there is a growing number of Muslim asylum seekers from Africa. There are currently mosques in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick, Cork, Galway and Ballyhaunis.

The Sunday Independent's obsession with Islam

'Islamism and not Israel is Ireland's deadly enemy'

13 August 2006

"I believe that ideological Islamism has no boundaries. As I have said before it is only a matter of time before Islamic terrorists use a tactical nuclear device in London or New York. Millions will die. And the mushroom clouds won't spare this sacred island."

Eoghan Harris

What UK and Irish Muslims can do for their countries: they can start by dropping their whingeing victim mentality

13 August 2006

"A worse menace than communisim, Islamism is a totalitarian ideology that believes the world should live according to Islamic law and is prepared to wipe out anyone, anywhere, who stands in the way. Contemplating what Islamists have in mind for us (think Taliban), there are moments when I feel positively nostalgic about the fifties Irish Catholic church"

Ruth Dudley Edwards

'Theologian of terror' held radical Islamic council session here

6 March 2005

"AN ISLAMIC group which has advocated suicide bombing, the murder of homosexuals and the mutilation of corpses of servicemen in Iraq has just held a conference in the Irish Islamic Centre in Clonskeagh, Dublin."

JIM CUSACK and MARK DOOLEY

Islamic extremists use Irish base to preach global hate

12 February 2006

"In Monday's Irish Times, Sheikh Yahya Al Hussein said that since the 7/7 bombings 'some Muslims have been singled out' for 'exaggerated' attention by Irish journalists... I presume Sheikh Yahya was thinking of people like me when he made that claim... And although I have never insulted Islam or the Prophet Muhammad, I was still threatened by dangerous elements within the Muslim community... Last Monday, a high-profile terror group called the Islamic Army in Iraq issued the following statement: 'We swear to God, if we catch a Danish citizen in Iraq, we will cut him to pieces.' And guess who the leader of that group which has murdered its way through Baghdad is? He is an Irish citizen of Libyan extraction who operates out of Dublin.

In short, Ireland has become a hub for global terror networks to function freely."

Mark Dooley