Anti-terrorism legislation and the Arab/Muslim community in Britain

Ghada Karmi

The war against what the West calls terrorism has been escalating in recent years. The definition of what constitutes 'terrorism' has likewise become a Western prerogative, in which the US has primarily arrogated to itself the task of leading 'the Free World' in a tough war against individual 'terrorists' and so-called terrorist states. It is noticeable that most of those on the American list of terrorism are either Arab or Muslim. Hitherto, such had not been the case in Britain.

But this situation may now be about to change with the introduction of a little discussed, but drastic, piece of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim legislation. The new Terrorism Act, which came into force on February 19, was passed by Parliament during the summer of 2000 and at the time excited hardly any comment in the Asian, Arab or British media. But it should have done, for it provides legislation unprecedented in the British judiciary, against what is termed 'proscribed organisations', meaning those believed to be engaged in terrorist activity.

Historically, anti-terrorist legislation in Britain started in 1974 and was aimed against the activities of the IRA in the UK. The Prevention of Terrorism Act passed then was an emergency piece of legislation which gave the police powers to arrest and question anyone suspected of pro-IRA activity. It was renewed every year because the situation in Northern Ireland was a changing one and there was an anticipation that a peace settlement would eventually emerge. When this fact began to happen during the 1990s, the British Home Secretary decided in 1995 to review the old anti-terrorism law. The new Terrorism Act, however, is a very different piece of legislation. It is permanent and not subject to review; it widens the definition of what constitutes terrorism to include religious and ideological movements, and it gives the police wide ranging powers.

A list of 21 such groups was accepted by Parliament as henceforth proscribed. Of these, 14 are Arab/Islamic. 10 of the14 are Arab (Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Yemeni, Algerian and Lebanese), and of these three are Palestinian (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Abu Nidal group). Three of the four Islamic groups are Kashmiri. Though the presumed aim of the anti-terrorist legislation is the protection of Britain, closer examination of the list shows that none of the Muslim and Arab groups cited has any known military activity here.

In a few cases there is evidence of a limited membership and of fund-raising in the UK, but the majority, according to the Home Office's own description, operate outside, and almost all in their places of origin. This is especially true of the Arab and Palestinian groups. More seriously, the descriptions given in the Home Office documents (to which I had access as part of a small invited delegation to see the Home Secretary last February) for some of these groups, contain striking ambiguities and errors. For example, the Lebanese group Hizbullah is described as having a separate branch called 'The External Security Organisation'. This is said to have been responsible for a string of bombings, from 1983 onwards, of US, French and Kuwaiti buildings in Beirut, and a number of kidnappings, including those of John McCarthy and Terry Waite. It is also allegedly responsible for the kidnappings of an Israeli businessman from Europe and of Israeli soldiers from the Shebaa farms in South Lebanon. But nowhere does the document state what evidence there is that all these operations were indeed carried out by Hizbullah, as opposed to any number of small splinter groups acting autonomously. Nor is there any explanation of the term 'kidnapping' when applied to Israeli soldiers in disputed Lebanese/Syrian territory. It would have been more accurate to describe this as capture of members of an illegal occupying army by a people resisting that occupation.

A worse mistake concerns the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is also on the list. This is described as a 'Shi'i organisation' committed to replacing Israel with an Iranian style Islamic Republic. Now, everyone knows that there are hardly any Shi'ites in Palestine, let alone a whole Shi'ite organisation and if what is implied is that Islamic Jihad has links with Iran, then the evidence for that statement should have been presented. These and similar errors, no doubt present elsewhere in the Home Office list, should have been rigorously checked before allowing them to become part of such potentially devastating legislation. But the worst aspect of the affair is the total lack of discrimination between what may be defined as legitimate national resistance to military repression and mindless acts of violence against innocent people. Nowhere is there the slightest recognition that Palestinians, or Lebanese, or indeed Kashmiri people are fighting a legitimate war for their rights. They are all lumped together as terrorists.

The powers ranged against the proscribed organisations are truly draconian. From now on it will be illegal to support them politically, financially, or in any other way, either in the UK or outside. The definition of 'support' is ambiguous. The decision will, in practice, be left to the police and the judiciary. It can mean anything from attending a meeting which upholds the aims of a proscribed organisation, to giving money to its humanitarian programme if it has one, and even to wearing a T-shirt bearing its name. It also extends to doing these things outside the UK. So, if, for example, a Palestinian normally living in Britain goes to visit the West Bank and, while there, attends a rally in support of Hamas, he or she will have committed a criminal offence under British law and may be prosecuted. The same will apply to expatriates of the other countries on the list.

The effect of this will be to create a climate of fear and uncertainty where many people will hesitate before they engage in any political activity. While this is an undesirable outcome in general, in the case of the British Arab and Muslim community it will be disastrous. This community has traditionally been timid in asserting itself in Western societies. Arabs have scarcely featured in British public life and have held back from engaging in political activity. Such reticence was usually put down to their unfamiliarity with Western democratic systems and a hangover from the fear of scrutiny by the security forces of their home countries. For Palestinians, there was the additional problem of Israeli persecution and surveillance by the British secret services.

But, most encouragingly, behaviour has been changing in recent times. More Muslims have put themselves forward for public office and Arabs in Britain were beginning to organise more effectively. Since the Aqsa intifada began last September an active campaign of demonstrations, pickets and lobbying has been instituted, and a feeling of communal solidarity with the Palestinian struggle has sprung up and engaged the whole Arab community. It should have become the model for their future political work in Britain. But the restrictions which the new Terrorism Act brings in, may well reverse this process and return many Arabs to the old paranoia and insecurity.

Why did the British government do it? How were British interests harmed by organisations which operate far away and against non-British targets? The truth of course is that it is not Britain which stands to gain by these prohibitions, but some other countries. The Home Office minister Charles Clark confessed openly in the summer of 2000 that, in drawing up the Terrorism Act, the government had been sympathetic to 'representations' from the US, France, Israel and India. And indeed the British Act is clearly modelled on similar American anti-terrorist legislation passed in 1996. The proscription on the groups selected answers to the agendas of other nations, most clearly that of Israel which has far more to fear from Hizbullah and Hamas than Britain ever could. And that of course is why the proscribed list omits any mention of Jewish organisations. The racist and violent Kach or Kahane Chai groups, for example, should more than adequately have fulfilled the Home Secretary's criteria for inclusion on the list, but do not appear.

The idea behind this legislation is mechanical and simplistic and clearly has its origins in the US. In regarding the control of terrorism as an international imperative to which all 'civilised nations' must contribute, it attempts to give a security aspect to globalisation. But it does so in a vacuum of political analysis. 'Terrorism' - a blanket term which includes everything from a liberation struggle to a civilian bombing - is seen as a senseless evil which must be stamped out without regard to its causes. The solution to it is merely a matter of better policing, not of understanding its underlying roots and trying to address them. Far better if Britain, which has been so instrumental historically for the creation of the Arab region's current problems, had fought in the international arena for the legal rights of people resisting occupation, rather than contributing to their persecution through this flawed and regressive legislation. 14 August 2001

(Dr Ghada Karmi was until recently the Chair of the Palestinian Community Association in Britain. She has worked professionally in the field of migration and is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Geopolitics Centre of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London).