Extremism

Last week the London Police arrested two Muslim youths for racially abusing a Londoner who was dressed up as a woman with makeup in a town in East London. The abusers posted a video clip of the incident on You Tube which lead the police to identify them. The video clip showed the youths shouting at the victim saying, “This is a Muslim area, get out of here”. There were a few similar incidents recently where a white girl in a mini skirt was asked to cover up or leave the area, and grabbing the can of beer from a youth saying he is not allowed to drink in a Muslim area. The police took immediate action and arrested the Muslim youths.

Although the first Muslim organization in the UK was founded in 1889 a mosque had been built in Wales well before that in 1860 for the use of Yemeni Muslim sailors who arrived in Port Cardiff on their way around the world. In 1961 there were seven mosques in the UK. It had risen to 1,500 by 2010.

According to the census in 2011, it was declared that Islam is the second largest religion in the UK, second to Christianity. In 2011 it was reported that the United Kingdom has around 60,000 converts to Islam with 66 percent of them being women. Around seven percent of the Muslims in the UK consider them as British and 81 percent say they consider themselves as Muslims first. That is the way of thinking of Muslims born in the UK. Around 28 percent of them think they should live under Sharia Law. Sharia Law represents the Islam way of life. Under the Sharia Law, believers who leave the Islam faith face the death penalty.

The first Muslim Member of the British Parliament Mohamed Sarwa was elected in 1997 from the Glasgow area in Scotland. Pakistan born Sarwa was later accused of election irregularities and was suspended from the Labour Party.

He was later acquitted. He stepped down in 2010 and his son succeeded at the general election. Sarwa was the first MP to swear the Oath of Allegiance on the Qur'an in the British Parliament. In 2001, two Muslim MPs were elected and it increased to four in 2005. In the 2010 elections, it increased to eight members which included the first Muslim female member of the UK Parliament.

A Labour MP Sahid Malik predicts that by 2040 there will be a Muslim Prime Minister in the UK. There was a demand of setting up a Muslim Parliament in the UK sometime ago.

There were many discussions on racism in the UK recently. The British National Party (BNP) founded in 1982 had anti-migration policy at the top of its agenda. It restricted its membership to “indigenous British” people until there was a legal challenge to its constitution in 2010.

The English Defence League formed in 2009 to counter Muslim extremism, soared recently. The BNP won two seats at the European Parliament elections but failed to win a single seat at the general elections in 2010. They received 565,000 votes from the entire population. This is 1.9 percent of the total votes polled. That is how the British majority expressed their displeasure to any kind of extremism. It is evident that some Muslim institutions express their disapproval of the rising extremism in the UK. They make statements against extremism and try to keep peace among the communities.

The extremists have no place in this civilized world. Extremists in any faith, belief or a religion face the same fate. It is not healthy to boost racial hatred to fulfill narrow ambitions. There should be a right to live and die as a free person. The freedom of speech and the freedom of religion should not be restricted at any cost. Writer, philosopher, playwright Voltaire once said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

Section 14.1e of the Constitution of Sri Lanka states 'Every citizen is entitled to the freedom, either by himself or in association with others and either in public or in private to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching'. No one can ignore or divert from it.

According to the 2011 UK census, Christianity is the major religion, followed by Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism. There is a large number of individuals with nominal or no religious affiliations at all.

They all live in peace and harmony. One or two extremists try to ruin it by expressing their stupidity but the long arm of law acts above them. There is no place for any type of racial extremism in the British society today.