Iraq

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, I refer you to a short debate I held in Grand Committee on 19 November last, when I asked the Government to justify the Prime Minister’s statement after the murder of Drummer Rigby that there is nothing in Islam which justifies acts of violence. I will not repeat what I said then, given our time constraint, but mention it as background to these few words.

We are now met to consider military action against the self-styled Islamic State, which has surfaced since that debate, and I support such action; but I fear that military action alone—and even victorious boots on the ground—will not be able to contain the resurgence of jihadist Islam on our planet. I suggest that we have to look deeper and accept that there are many verses in the later Koran and in the later actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, which Muslims are instructed to follow, which justify acts of violence.

Islam has the problem of the Muslim tenet of abrogation, which holds that where there is contradiction in the Koran, the later texts outweigh the earlier. I cited two of those verses on 19 November but have time for only one today. Surah 9.29 reads like this:

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—[fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled”.

That means a tax on non-Muslims.

There are many other such verses which are being enforced by ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, and wherever the sharia penal code is strictly enforced.

It does not help to point out that the Bible and other ancient religious texts have similarly violent passages. Jehovah did indeed smite the uncircumcised quite a bit in the Old Testament, but there is nothing of that in the New Testament, from which Christianity takes its inspiration. Jesus said:

“Love thy neighbour as thyself”,

and, “Do unto others as you would they should do unto you”. His instruction was universal. He was not talking just about relations between Christians, whereas I understand that the verses of peace in the Koran may refer largely to relations between Muslims. Of course, modern Jews do not act out the gruesome instructions of Leviticus and Exodus, so the comparison with the Old Testament does not help.

As I said on 19 November, Christianity has still been the volcano through which much evil has erupted over the centuries, but that is no longer happening. Today, it appears that the collective darkness of our humanity has moved largely into the violent end of Islam, where only peaceful Islam can resist it theologically and defeat it at its roots. As the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal said in her opening remarks, we must support our Muslim friends as they try to reclaim their religion—I would add, particularly in this country.

I repeat a question I put to the Government on 19 November, to which I did not get a reply: as our jihadists are such a tiny minority who misinterpret the Koran and the holy texts, why does the great majority of Muslims not do more to stand up against them? For instance, could not the Government encourage our Muslim leaders in this country to call a great council to issue a fatwa against our jihadists, casting them out of Islam? Dozens of our imams wrote to the Independent newspaper on 17 September invoking Islam for the release of Alan Henning. Could they not form the nucleus of such a council? It would also need to address the violent verses in the Koran to which I have referred. One suggestion is that they should be declared to refer to the internal struggle between good and evil within each one of us, while true Islam flows only from the verses of peace.

Perhaps such a new explanation of Islam might also help to meet the point made by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury—that our young Muslims need a much better vision for their lives—with which, I am sure, all your Lordships agree.

I look forward to the Government’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the noble Lord has misquoted me—

[Lord Bach]

No, I am not going to take the intervention.

ISIL’s modus operandi has been to attack minority groups—Christians, Yazidis, Turkmens, Shias, Kurds—on either side of the Syrian-Iraqi frontier. We heard today about the Kurds in northern Syria close to the Turkish border who have been made refugees. These are minorities that clearly cannot defend themselves and are often faced with a choice that is actually no choice—convert or die. Just to say it shows how completely unacceptable ISIL’s behaviour is and how it cannot remain unanswered.

However, even limited military intervention brings unforeseen and uncertain circumstances. If in a short while the other place supports the Motion before it, it will be supporting action to prevent at least the foreseeable and certain killings of Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Christian and Yazidi Iraqis by ISIL, and this country will be supporting action that has broad support in the region and follows, as we have heard, a direct request from the democratically elected Government of Iraq.

I will repeat what the Opposition need to be satisfied of before supporting the Government’s proposal in another place: just cause; that the proposed action is a last resort; proportionality; a reasonable prospect of success; a legal base, of course; and broad regional support. On all those bases, we are happy to support the Government today but of course it is a mark of our freedoms and our democracy that the Opposition can and will continue to question, probe and scrutinise. We believe the Government have a duty in these circumstances to act in the national interest and it is the duty of the Opposition to support them when they are acting in the national interest, as they are in this case. I hope that in the time ahead—and I am sure that the Minister will be able to agree to this—the Government will ensure that the House is brought up to date at all times and that debates will be held where and when necessary.

The House will be united in its wholehearted support for the men and women of the Armed Forces who will take part in this perilous action with skill, courage and their characteristic devotion to duty—and, of course, our hearts should be with the families who they leave behind. As for ground troops, our view is that the Government are right to resist putting substantial combat forces back into Iraq. There does not seem to be much public or parliamentary support for such action. But, as importantly, it would undermine an essential point that needs to be made again and again to the Iraqi Government and their Sunni Arab neighbours—that this has to be their fight, if it is to be successful.

The fight against ISIL is, at its core, a struggle for the future of the Sunni world, so it is crucial that Sunni Governments have not only offered support but are participating in the multilateral mission. ISIL is too entrenched, well equipped and wealthy to be defeated by air power alone, and it can only be defeated on the ground with someone to replace it on the ground. Notwithstanding the very impressive capabilities of the Peshmerga, that will take time, given the current condition of the Iraqi army. Air strikes are essential to stem ISIL’s advance and degrade and destroy its operations and, at the very least, to contain it. However, we should be clear that these objectives of containment and disrupting and weakening ISIL must be in the service of creating the conditions for a new form of governance in Sunni Iraq. There must be an underpinning by a clear political strategy. The ultimate answer lies in local politics, not in external intervention.

The commencement to military action should not be a signal that the time for diplomacy is over. We have a duty to devise a comprehensive and effective political and diplomatic strategy for eliminating the threat of ISIL throughout the Middle East. So while today we have a clear legal, moral and political mandate to act to help to defeat ISIL in Iraq, we must also acknowledge that this mission brings with it unforeseen consequences and acknowledge that military action alone will not defeat ISIL. That is why the international community’s military response to the threat that ISIL poses is just one element of a long-term multinational political strategy in the region. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, it is necessary but not sufficient.

ISIL is a real and present danger, not just to the Middle East but to all of us. The world is too small for Britain to be able to just look the other way and say, “Well, this is really nothing to do with us”. This appalling mixture of medieval barbarism and state-of-the-art modern technology and finance has to be stood up to. Britain has to play its part in that enterprise. Force is not enough but, without it, does anyone seriously believe that ISIL can be contained, let alone defeated?