The Guardian

Why was I asked to condemn Islamist violence days after Christchurch?

Latifa Akay

Mon 18 Mar 2019

I believe white supremacy fuelled the attack, failing to recognise this lays groundwork for more violence

Less than two days after the horror of the massacre of 50 Muslims in two mosques in New Zealand, I was asked in an interview on the BBC news channel whether or not I think Muslim communities in the UK do enough to condemn Islamist extremism.

“There’s a straightforward problem here, isn’t there – one of the reasons that some of this language has become common is bluntly because of the Islamist violence and the Islamist extremism that has happened – one of the criticisms we hear in this country has been that there isn’t enough criticism of those people by the mainstream Islamic community – what do you say to that?”

Ordinarily, I would not be surprised by this question. Muslims are well used to being held collectively responsible for the violent acts of anyone identifying as Muslim, or indeed with any semblance of Muslim heritage.

However, in this moment, I felt shocked. It was less than two days after the terrifying massacre had taken place. Community members in Christchurch were still in the unbearable position of attempting to begin to reconcile with the loss of their loved ones and the fate of many survivors yet to be determined. Some bodies had not been identified, funerals had yet to happen, news had just come out that the youngest victim was three years old.

Like many Muslims around the world, I was still reeling – feeling the heavy hollowness of the extent to which violence against Muslims is decontextualised and undermined, and worrying as we do about the safety of our loved ones and our communities. I had felt relieved the previous day at the simple fact of hearing my mother say that she and my father had returned safely from Jummah prayers at their mosque in Belfast.

Yet somehow it felt appropriate for the presenter to re-establish an order – of Muslims as the aggressor and never simply a worthy victim. Where is the dignity of the dead, of the grieving?

The truth is that Muslim communities are not afforded the luxury of grieving in peace. To be able to do so would disrupt an intentionally constructed belief that is critical to western states to uphold state surveillance, barbaric immigration policies and the racist governments that are seeing a resurgence across the globe. This is the belief that Muslims are dangerous, undeserving and, ultimately, disposable.

Imagine if the tables were turned. If after, God forbid, an act of terror in the name of Islam, a white guest were asked to reflect on what white people could have done differently to stop such an act of terror happening. There would have been a national outcry.

Over the past few days we have seen many UK politicians, commentators and influencers who regularly peddle out hate against Muslims and immigrants expressing their sympathies. Many of them will refuse to accept their hypocrisy, or the fact that this brutality has not just emerged from a vacuum. That is the hardest thing. That despite the fact that this atrocity has happened – that the well-paved path that has led to making such an act possible is not being acknowledged. It is that failure to acknowledge what lead to this terror that means this kind of atrocity is so likely to happen again. The incident in Surrey on Saturday night, where a man was attacked in a suspected far-right-inspired event, is a reminder of just how close to home this is.

It is not useful to only associate white supremacy with the far right. White supremacy appears on our television screens with brutal acts such as the Christchurch massacre, but it is fed and nurtured in the fabric of our societies.

Hatred of Muslims was a central part of the white supremacist ideology that appears to have in part motivated the Christchurch terrorist. The less overt “liberal” Islamophobia that we see daily in media and politics may look very different – but the two cannot be divorced. The pattern is clear. If you purposefully cultivate the idea that a massively diverse group of people are violent, undeserving and “incompatible” with society, you dehumanise them. Dehumanisation allows for disposability, whether that is a terrorist gunning down 50 people in their place of worship, or states – including the UK – failing to intervene to save 45 people who died in the Mediterranean on the very same day trying to cross from Morocco to Spain.

Aside from the disrespect to those lives lost in Christchurch, and their grieving communities, what felt incredibly irresponsible about being asked about Islamist terrorism, was how it skewed the issue away from the fact that this attack appeared fuelled by white supremacy. Hatred of Muslims is an element of white supremacy – but also hatred of migrants and refugees in general, of Jews, black people and everyone at those intersections. We have seen similar manifestations of such violence in the tragic mass shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue last year, or the Charleston church mass shooting at one of the oldest black churches in the US in 2015.

To link this in any way as a response to Islamist violence wilfully ignores the white supremacist element apparently articulated in the gunman’s hate-filled manifesto and erases the brutal history of white supremacy and those who are oppressed by its many manifestations today.

It was Muslims who were targeted by the terrorist in Christchurch, but it will be other communities tomorrow. Some of the media response following the attack has sought to present the terrorist predictably as a troubled individual on the wrong path – he has been described as “an angelic boy” and “likeable” – as opposed to a terrorist driven by ideology. Continuing to fail to engage with the white supremacy that may have fuelled this attack only lays the groundwork for the enactment of further violence on Muslims and other marginalised communities in the future. As James Baldwin wrote in an open letter to Angela Davis: “For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night”.

Latifa Akay is director of education at Maslaha, a charity that tackles social inequalities in Muslim and other marginalised communities