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Issue 198, Friday 28 October 2005 - 25 Ramadan 1426

Mosques targeted for closure

By Hamed Chapman

Religious leaders have expressed alarm at the Government’s new controversial proposals to give the police powers to close places of worship, which fail to comply with an order to prevent them from being used to foment extremism.
Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has been accused of failing to listen to the advice of Muslim task forces set up in the wake of the July bombings in London in a whole raft of anti-terrorism legislation.
Imam Ibrahim Mogra, Deputy Convenor of the working group on Imams and Mosques said that he was surprised by Clarke proceeding to issue a consultation paper on ‘Preventing Extremism Together – Places of Worship’ on October 5 after he rejected suggestions that mosques would be targeted when welcoming the task forces’ recommendations last month.
“Charles Clarke told us on September 22 that the Government was not intending to close down any mosques but that he wanted cooperation and assistance from the Muslim community,” Mogra told The Muslim News. “I told the Home Secretary that mosques are doing good work and we need to celebrate good practice,”he said.
The Leicester-based Imam, who chairs the Muslim Council of Britain’s Mosques and Community Affairs Committee, warned that the Government’s focus was misdirected. “Radicalisation and extremism does not take place in mosques. It takes place elsewhere. So the shift has to be to other areas where young people are vulnerable,” he said.
Among recommendations, the task force pointed out that mosques did not seem to be involved with the radicalisation of the 7/7 bombers and said it was individuals that had to be tackled, not action against mosques as a whole. It also advised the Government of the need to understand the wider role of the mosque in the community.
In announcing his proposals, the Home Secretary said that he would be consulting until November before deciding to legislate. He revealed he was considering creating a legal process whereby those controlling places of worship can be required by a court order to take steps to stop “certain extremist behaviour” occurring. But even regardless of whether a person is successfully prosecuted for failure to comply with the order, he said that a further order could still be issued restricting the use of the place of worship, including temporary closure.
The Church of England also said it was challenging the Government on why it is trying to single out places of worship in its campaign against extremism. The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Tom Butler, said that the Government’s proposals were a “disproportionate” response. “Other places of gathering are far more likely than places of worship to be used for the purposes the Government has in mind and one must question why places of worship have been singled out,” he said.
There are about 40,000 churches in Britain of which 16,000 belong to the Church of England, and the Bishop said “there has never been any suggestion of behaviour related to terrorism in any of them.” He believed that there had been only one case in the public domain in recent years, regarding Finsbury Park Mosque, where any potential link between a place of worship and terrorist activity had been suggested. “Even in that case, the problem was resolved by the management committee within the present law,” said the Bishop, who is a member of the House of Lords. He said that the Church of England would respond “robustly” to the consultations. “Public access to Church of England churches has for long been guaranteed by legislation, giving all members of the public the right to enter during times of public worship. To legislate for restrictions on this right would raise significant issues of freedom of worship,” the Bishop warned.
In his report on the Government’s proposed changes in anti-terror laws, the independent reviewer, Lord Carlile said that given the extensive tightening of laws and creation of new offences already planned, he had “doubt” on the urgency to act against places of worship. “Plainly there are some human rights issues around these proposals, given the fundamental nature of freedom of worship,” he warned. The QC, who is also a Lib Dem peer, warned that there were also “practical difficulties too, about defining worship, and places of worship.” Some places, he said, were merely domestic spaces or in the open air. “What is a sermon? When is a lecture a sermon, and vice-versa? These are serious questions and require careful examination before we introduce what could be a law we might come to regret,” his report to the Government also said.
Given the Government’s record of proceeding with proposals regardless of concerns, Lord Carlile suggested that if after the consultation it remains the Government’s wish to legislate, then a draft bill could be first produced and be subjected to the pre-legislative parliamentary scrutiny procedure. “This followed by normal legislative procedures would provide the best possible prospect of workable legislation, if that can be achieved,” he recommended.
In his other conclusions, the independent reviewer said he had a “serious concern” about the original on the glorification of terrorism, but that the revised version in the Government’s bill was significantly different. He recommended that clauses on training for terrorism be omitted. Like human and civil rights, Lord Carlile also voiced a set of concerns about extending pre-charge detention of terrorist suspect from two weeks to three months and about the recent detention of former subjects of control orders for deportation, in the absence of current Memoranda of Understanding on their treatment with the countries to which they would be sent back to.