Teddy bear peer attacks fellow Muslims for 'victim culture' and failing to condemn terrorism

NEWS / article

Teddy bear peer attacks fellow Muslims for 'victim culture' and failing to condemn terrorism
Last updated at 16:07pm on 11th December 2007

Britain's only woman Muslim peer today rounded on fellow British Muslims for falling into a 'victim culture'.

Baroness Warsi, who helped secure the release of teddy-bear row teacher Gillian Gibbons, said Muslims in Britain had an added responsibility to condemn outrages committed in the name of Islam.

And in a blunt message to the "hardliners and hotheads" the Conservative spokeswoman on community cohesion said that religious leaders were often guilty of stirring up trouble and creating a 'seige mentality' among British Muslims.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi: Attacks fellow British Muslims for their 'victim culture'

"British Muslims have the foremost responsibility here," she said. "As long as the Muslim community remains in a victim culture, a siege mentality, they allow others to control the debate.

"When it comes to Islam, the majority of Muslims understand the difference between culture and religion. It's not for others to tell Muslims what is and isn't Islam. It's for the community, and in that I include myself, to expound the truth about our faith – not let others interpret it for us. It is for us to be the change – not let others impose it on us."

She added that during her recent trip to Sudan she had witnessed religious tension similar to that she has known in her home town of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

She has now called on fellow Muslims to stand up and not be not be swayed by religious leaders, many of whom she says are 'busting for a fight'.

"For me, cohesion means that where there is local diversity, different races and religions get along," she said.

"Cohesion should never mean multiculturalism, in the way that this concept has been translated by Labour: the doctrine of separate identity, with each group encouraged to feel that identity requires the expression of difference to the point of hostility."

"Multiculturalism has been manipulated to entrench the right to difference, a divisive concept, at the expense of the right to equal treatment despite difference, a unifying concept.

Lady Warsi said British Muslims must be more robust about confronting hardline views said religion was used by some Muslims as justification for unacceptable cultural conventions.

"There are people in Saudi Arabia who say women driving cars is unIslamic. In Somalia some say Muslim girls should be circumcised. That's not the Islam I know," she said.

"There are ideas we get here in Britain which are just as wrong," she said. "Take forced marriages. Islam is unambiguous in its condemnation of forced marriage.

"Or take honour killings, I even find this label offensive because there is nothing honourable about these murders, and perpetrators of such crimes should not be allowed to hide behind any faith."