The Muslim News - Islam not a threat, says former cabinet minister

Issue 186, Friday 29 October 2004 - 22 Ramadan 1412

Islam not a threat, says former cabinet minister

By Ahmed J Versi

Islam is not a threat to the West, says former Tory Chancellor, Lord Lamont. He believed such a view is “foolish” but blamed the media for highlighting what he called a minority view on the issue.
“There are attempts by some parts of the media, reflecting public opinion, to create a clash between the civilisations, the Christian west and Islam,” Lord Lamont told The Muslim News. But one cannot “regard a great religion like Islam, as being in some sense, the enemy of civilisation”, he said.
The Tory peer said he also disagreed with France, which perceives Islamic dress, the hijab, as a threat to their secularism. “When I was in Karachi I very specifically criticised the French ban of the headscarf in the state schools. I contrasted it with my experience in the part of London where I live, young Muslim women serve in the shops, they wear headscarfs, sometimes with a t-shirt and jeans, and I can’t find anything at all threatening about this”, he said.
In his exclusive interview with The Muslim News at his office in London, Lord Lamont said he believed that there is a problem of Islamophobia in this country.
“It is a sort of fear of the unknown and I think things like interfaith organisations are very important.” He referred to some Muslims taking texts out of context from the Qur’an in the same way as some Jews and Christians do, but warned people not to tarnish the whole Muslim community with the same brush when reporting and talking on terrorism. “There are collective fallacies uttered - all Muslims are fundamentalists and all fundamentalists are terrorists, or that all Saudis are terrorists,” the former Chancellor said.
When he asked why was it that Muslims were the only faith community that was targeted by the police and security forces on terrorism, especially at airports when going abroad, Lord Lamont replied that profiling of Muslims would happen as the “profile of would be terrorists are people of Middle Eastern origin.” He reminded Muslims that “at one time people with Irish accents would be stopped.”
But when he was told that the questions Muslims are asked at airports are not related to terrorism, he acknowledged that this was wrong. “It is born out of fear” and agreed that such fear was mistaken.
On international issues, Lord Lamont, former Vice Chair on International Nuclear Safety Commission, believed that Iran may be “moving in the direction of putting itself in a position to be able to develop nuclear weapons”. But he thought that the best way of dealing with Iran is the European approach, “of trying to engage in dialogue, confidence building” and not by confrontation.
Lord Lamont said he supported the war on Afghanistan for “security measures” but was against the war against Iraq and considered it as a “mistake”.

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