Lost in Translation

Civitas, 5 June 2006

It has recently been announced that Sir Iqbal Sacranie is to step down as head of the Muslim Council of Britain in favour of his deputy, Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari.
A BBC news profile of Dr Bari informs us that he is chairman of the East London Mosque, as well as a specialist teacher in London’s Tower Hamlet for something the web-site terms ‘behaviour support’ and for which, it further reports, Dr Bari received an MBE in 2003.
According to this profile of him, at last year’s general election, Dr Bari, in his capacity as chairman of the London Mosque, helped to secure a healthy turnout of the Muslim vote in London’s East End by informing its attendees they had a duty to vote.
It would be tempting, although doubtless mistaken, to think that part of Dr Bair’s remit as a teacher of ‘behaviour support’ involved this call to active citizenship.
To think this of what falls under Dr Bari’s remit as a teacher of ‘behaviour support’, would doubtless be mistaken, however tempting, since it was precisely the large Muslim turnout his intervention is reported to have helped secure that was responsible for the return to parliament of George Galloway and his notorious ‘Respect’ party, hardly a good day for parliamentary democracy.

Of still greater cause for concern about the new head of the Muslim Council than any possible link he might have with George Galloway and his Respect party are the replies that he gave in an interview to John Ware in a BBC Panorama programme broadcast last August called ‘A Question of Leadership’.
John Ware questioned Dr Bari on the wisdom of the decision of his mosque to make its guest of honour the Saudi cleric, Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, at the opening in 2004 of a new Islamic centre. For, as Mr Ware explained, a Saudi website had published sermons of the Saudi cleric in which he had described Jews as ‘scum of the earth’ and ‘monkeys and pigs’, Hindus as ‘idol worshippers’ , and Christians as ‘worshippers of the cross’.
Dr Bari’s replies to Mr Ware’s queries, reproduced below from the BBC transcript of the programme, do not bode well for his coming term as Head of the Muslim Council, although they do, perhaps, explain why he sits on the Greater London Authority’s Faith Advisory Group.
Part of the exchange between the two went so, with Mr Ware beginning by asking Dr Bari whether he would have extended the invitation to Sheikh Sudais had he known what he had preached :
John Ware: Do I take it that if you were satisfied he had said such things you would not have invited him over?
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Chairman, East London Mosque, Deputy Secretary General, Muslim Council Of Britain: Well of course if it was proved that he exactly said this thing that you mentioned then why do you invited people who would be saying like this?
John Ware: I mean, let me say what else he’s reported to have said, he said: ‘There should be no peace with the rats of the world.’ Again he refers to Jews as the scum of the human race, offspring of apes and pigs, and he has also referred to Christians as worshippers of the cross. You don’t see Christians in those terms?
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: I don’t see Christians in those terms.
John Ware: You don’t see Christians in those terms?
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: No.
John Ware: No. And idol worship? You don’t see Hindus as idol worshippers, do you? I’m sure you don’t, do you? Do you?
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well… why are you bringing all this?
John Ware: You, er, I mean you do not regard Hindus as idol worshippers?
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well Hindu… you mean the definition? When it’s idol worshipper, different people worship God in different manners.
John Ware: Mmm.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Once again you are entering into the theological debate and Muslims worship one monotheistic God and many other communities may have different versions of God.
John Ware: No, I understand that.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: The Trinity may be one of them.
John Ware: I understand that.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: And it all depends how you use the word and explain the word.
John Ware: Sure, but this is harsh.. you wouldn’t… I mean no, I accept all that, but this is different, isn’t it. This is very harsh language; this in effect denounces other faiths, Hindus, Christians and Jews.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: Well denouncing any faith is not acceptable in Islam, that’s not the Prophetic teaching. We need to know the source of this and this is very dangerous thing, that character assassination of Muslim scholars and leaders are getting very widespread.
John Ware: I’m not trying to assassinate his character I’m simply trying to deal with the facts. That’s all I’m trying to do.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari: No, I know, you are mentioning… you are saying facts but we have a question whether these are facts.
John Ware: The facts are easily checkable – we found a selection of the Sheikh’s sermons on a Saudi website covering mosques in the holy cities of Medina and Mecca – with English translations.
It would be invidious to speculate what other form of ‘behaviour support’ Dr Bari might be giving young East London Muslims besides instructing them on their religious duty to vote for the likes of George Galloway and his Respect party. But Dr Bari’s past statements do not exactly encourage one to expect a radical improvement in relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in this country during his period in office.