Of course the institutions have distanced themselves from the preachers, and the preachers are saying they were quoted out of context. Admittedly, some of the quotes appeared highly selective (and one of those recorded has responded), but others appeared to be a clearer indication of their own views. One must ask what some of these preachers are doing in Britain, for by their own logic they're living under 'kuffar laws' they can never submit to and mingling with a people they're meant to hate and distance themselves from. One had declared 'the kuffar to be liars'. It must be slightly difficult shopping in Tesco's if that is what you believe. Stranger still that some seemed to be of foreign origin, so must have taken considerable effort in moving to Britain in the first place. Perhaps the allure of the welfare state is too strong...

Interwoven into the documentary were the usual camera tricks and the annoying habit of showing meaningless images such Muslims performing salat, their formal prayers, or Jack Straw's favourite, the women in a niqab whilst talking about extremism. Ibrahim Abusharif points out the problem with such editing, which is a common feature of documentaries about Muslims and extremism:

[W]e [often] see the Ritual Prayer of Islam linked (through image) with a scripted narrator's screed about violent teachings and extremism. We all sense it: image is a formidable conveyor of a message, especially in a time of intellectual sloth in which "image" is paramount culturally, politically, and commercially, more so than the written word, which also struggles with dilution.

All of which brings me onto a greater question. How far can Muslims go in defending  what a supposed Muslim Extremist says? Can we defend his or her right to say unpleasent views, even if they are not our views?

I find that whilst there is a common cause between different strains of Muslims in wanting certain, 'extremist', views to be overcome and diminished in strength, there is also a tendency by some to demand state intervention in Muslim religious practice and belief. 'If only the government would listen to our Islam instead of theirs.'

I would say that the views of the Extremists must be beaten through reason, rhetoric and persuasion, whether on a religious or a more secular footing, but this must be done by Muslims. This to me is also an implicit acceptance that such views will always exist, right or wrong. However, it seems some Muslims are still too infatuated by power and authority (something they denounce their Extremist opponents for), in demanding an authoritarian approach to stamping out religious views expressed by Muslims that they find unpalatable or outside their own normative understanding of Islam. The danger here is that government meddling in Muslim religious practices and beliefs will be open to the politics of sectarianism, and those Muslims with the power and financial backing will fill the role of the government's appointed Muslim 'watchdog' (ironically, the very charge laid against Saudi-backed groups, and those like the Neo-Labour Sufi Muslim Council). This is what, as far as I can see, happens in Muslim countries where religion is directly controlled by the state, and it seems as though many Muslims are still unable to appreciate just how dangerous surrender of religion to the state can be (it would appear medieval Muslims understood this problem far better than their modern followers).

I also find a similar problem when talking about this sort of issue to secular liberals. Whilst on the one hand they demand the 'right' to publish this or that cartoon and offend people, at the same time they would like to remove a similar 'right' of a religious person to express something their ears don't like to hear. More to the point, most Muslims, whether or not they're 'extremists', will undoubtedly have views on homosexuality and on gender relationships that secular liberals will dislike, which is something Muslims will share with other religious communities. If secular liberals are consistent, they will support the right of Muslims, or any other sectarian persuasion, to express views that they might find distasteful. (And historical roles now seem to be reversed; some religious Europeans now seem to be appealing to the separation of church and state, and the decoupling of law and morality, in order to defend their religious beliefs. See the case of Rocco Buttiglione and a recent interview by the BBC with the head of Catholics in Britain, Cormac Murphy O'Connor.)

Encouraging the murder of people is a different question. Perfectly good laws have been used in the past to convict a religious preacher, and a Muslim at that, of inciting murder without the need for any new draconian measures.

Also on the programme was T. J. Winter, and it was odd to see him and Haras Rafiq of the Sufi Muslim Council on the same 'team'. Apart from denouncing the Wahhabi/Salafi creed, Winter went onto say that the 'Muslim ghettoes' were being lost to the Wahhabis. This is something I noted back in November 2006, after attending a Radical Middle Way event with Dr. Umar Faruq Abdullah:   

People might knock the Salafi da'wah, but they're out there and in the prisons; they talk not only to Muslims, but others too, offering them a salvational discourse which gives their lives meaning [...] My point is that projects like The Radical Middle Way, and the various shukyh who speak publically, need to do more than speak at SOAS to Muslim doctors, lawyers and artists. They need to get out into the 'ghettoes', as it were.

I expect this will blow over once the routine media cycle finds something else to talk about. But once again what was on display was how our communal thinking in Britain is still dominated by the political and social makeup of Islam in traditionally Muslim 'homelands'.

Linking all of the preachers on the documentary was Saudi Arabia, where they all received training, and whose money and influence in British mosques and institutions is undeniable (for example, the Al-Tawhid mosque in east London has a large golden plate which tells us a Saudi dignatry opened the mosque back in the 1990s). However, I could also ask the ease with which these beliefs and views have penetrated Muslim community, for these preachers can only preach to an audience. Blaming the Saudis is the easy part; the hard part is to ask ourselves if we have bothered to pursue the accounts for a local mosque we attend, or attend any AGMs they must have (or force them to have AGMs if they don't, since mosques are usually registered charities). I'm as guilty as anyone else. And if we don't do it, then investigative journalists from Dispatches will.

And then there is the additional question of how Islam in Britain is dominated, at a political level, by a particular prism, as defined by Indian subcontinent Muslims (although this includes Muslims opposed to each other on more fundamental issues). This is understandable to a degree, since Muslims from the Subcontinent make up a significant number of the Muslim population in Britain. However, it has to be asked if our community groups and major institutions are really as committed to multicultural and multiethnic vision of Islam in Britain as they like to suggest in their public rhetoric.

It seems our groups and mosques and those who speak for us publically, receive privileges, patronage and funding from government, are forever beholden to someone else, other than the communities they are meant to serve, whether this someone else are foreign groups promoting their own narrow sectarianism or those with their own political agendas in Britain.