The Gulf

Debate between Charlotte Leslie and Gregory Campbell

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie]

Absolutely. That is a case for identifying illustrations of symptoms and their causes. Employment is crucial, because if someone is not employed, part of their identity—certainly their work community—and purpose is taken away. It is a manifestation of those things, but to understand what we are tackling we must understand the root underlying dynamics, of which my hon. Friend made the excellent point that unemployment, joblessness and poverty are a necessary part to understand, but not sufficient on their own.

The second reality Hedayah offered up was the prosaic observation that while tackling root ideology has a place, simply telling people strongly that their actions are wrong and that they should not do them is pretty useless—I will insert a quote from the “Life of Brian”: “Don’t do it again!”—and we cannot be surprised when that does not work. In a political world in which we can seldom find any initial response to atrocities such as those in Brussels and Paris other than to tell the perpetrators that we condemn them strongly, that rather unsurprising fact should be sobering.

Hedayah points out that for an individual to choose an alternative path, the alternative must match not only Daesh’s offer of identity, community and purpose, but the practical reality of security and welfare. If Daesh promises security to a frightened man who wants to feed his children, a viable alternative needs to be more than a moral lecture. The insights from the Gulf help clarify what our response should be and what our challenge is in forging that alternative to Daesh: a value system, identity, community and purpose that competes on providing welfare and a sense of risk and achievement. How do we build that compelling and exciting muscular moderation?

There is then perhaps an even more difficult question. Who is the forceful, charismatic leader of that muscular moderation: the daddy, the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Zarqawi, the bin Laden or the Sayyid Qutb? Who is the hero? Where is the leader in that new subversive movement that casts Daesh as the stale establishment and their hatred as weak and infantile and promotes a rebellious and resolute compassion for those who are different from oneself—even those who do not like us—as the strong and manly thing to do?

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree that in the middle east, and in the Gulf in particular, irrespective of the motivation of those of us in the west, we are almost always seen to be trying to impose some sort of external values? We need to see the intrinsic beliefs and views of the people in the region, who need to show leadership to take their communities out of the morass into which many of those nations have sunk in recent years.

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that good point. We often forget that the messenger is frequently more important than the message itself, because the message is fundamentally defined by who gives it. He makes a point that I will touch on later.

A third insight, which I found striking and relevant to our relations with the Gulf, was offered by His Excellency Dr Anwar Gargash, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. He talks of the dangers of a digital world, where

“my opinion has become my religion”.

That observation speaks not only to the role of the internet in spreading Daesh’s message—the mass communication that Tim Rice’s Judas so lamented the lack of—but to fundamental changes in digital technology that appear to have an effect on people’s thoughts. I have called that a change from cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, to sentio ergo sum, I feel therefore I am—or even to sentio ergo est, I feel therefore it is. In that, a person’s feeling dictates absolute truth.

As MPs, we have all seen—on social media in particular—that dangerous trend and false premise that says, “I am human. I think this. You do not think what I think. Therefore you are not human.” That is a seed of genocide and the beginning of a takfiri mentality that extends its blind intolerance way beyond the scope of Islam. We are beginning to see that in the hate diatribes of UK far-left groups who are sympathetic to Hamas, Hezbollah and other extremist terrorist groups. That is a slippery slope.

All those insights are from the hard end of battling extremism in the Gulf. It is easy for the west to forget that the majority of Daesh’s casualties are Muslim and that Daesh wants to punish nations such as the UAE for “poisoning” the sacred Arab peninsular with pluralism. It is also easy to forget that Sunni Gulf states are concerned about the rise of an emboldened Shi’a militia as Iran re-enters the global economy.

The response of the Gulf to extremism may provide a learning opportunity for Britain. What assessment has the Minister made of the UAE’s clampdown on extremist teaching in schools and of its policy towards registering imams in Mosques? Are there lessons to be learnt from that? More specifically, will he keep an open mind on Britain’s classification of the Muslim Brotherhood? That would be an extremely good way of working out whether they are moderate friends who can be engaged with on political terms and whether they will renounce the writings, teachings and celebrated martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb. If they refuse to do so, we may need to reassess urgently what we think of them in our political context. We cannot afford to be squeamish.

I have talked only about what Britain might learn from its relationship with the Gulf.