Revolts by young Arabs seeking freedom are a "huge opportunity" for Western counter-terrorism because they weaken al Qaeda's argument that democracy and Islam are incompatible, Security Minister Pauline Neville-Jones said on Thursday. Skip related content
Neville-Jones, said the example set by ordinary Muslims seeking peaceful political change would counter the attraction violent extremism still exerted on a small number of young people in Britain's Muslim minority communities.
"We have, if we can get this right, a great vehicle for the promotion of Western values," Neville-Jones told Reuters in an interview, referring to a surge of anti-government protests in countries in the Middle East and North Africa."These young people ... are asking for greater freedoms, they are asking for the kind of Western values to be implanted in their society that they can see through the Internet.
"It should be regarded in my view as a huge opportunity."
Britain's counter-terrorism efforts are widely watched in Europe and beyond after a string of attacks on the West dating back to the 1990s by young Islamist militants educated in Britain, which critics say has long been complacent about Islamist radicalism in its Muslim communities.
The leader of the last successful militant attack in Britain, British-Pakistani Mohammad Sidique Khan, made an implicit criticism of democracy in a posthumous statement explaining his decision to coordinate suicide bombings that killed 52 people in London in 2005.
"WE NEED TO INTEGRATE"
Referring to the Western invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, he drew a distinction between Western democracy and what he called his obedience to God, saying "your democratically elected governments perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you responsible."
The West should help political transition in Arab countries, said Neville-Jones, who is working on a new strategy to try to draw alienated Muslim youths away from extremism.
"We need to integrate," she said. "We need to be a single society and Muslims are as much a part of that as anybody else, and (for) extremists of any variety this is not welcome territory and not fertile ground for them."
Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's transnational militant network has traditionally drawn many recruits from Arab states, with Egyptians often figuring in senior positions. A principal ambition of al Qaeda is the violent overthrow of authoritarian Arab governments and their replacement by strict Islamic rule.
Bin Laden has said democracy is akin to idolatry as, according to him, it places men's desires and authority above God's. His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, has dismissed democracy as impious and as reflecting a state of "unbelief."
Neville-Jones suggested these notions were at odds with the push for democracy now seen in Arab countries.
IDEOLOGICAL CHALLENGE
"It does pose precisely the kind of ideological challenge back to the terrorist, (to) the sort of philosophy that has been promoted by the terrorists with their very deeply authoritarian, ideological and deeply conservative ideology, of the kind which really doesn't give people personal freedoms."
Neville-Jones said the Arab rebellions would be "of very great assistance to us" in promoting democracy among members of the country's estimated 1.8 million Muslim minority.
"We would certainly wish to ... demonstrate that being a Muslim and being part of a modern Western liberal democratic society are entirely compatible things," she said
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