This is a cross post by Faisal of The Spittoon
What would be the outcome if this was exchange were to take place between Inayat Bungalwala and a neutral interviewer:
Interviewer: Mr Bunglawala, as a prominent member of the Muslim community, what is your take on the Israel/Palestine situation? Do you actively seek bringing justice to Muslims in Palestine?
Bunglawala: I was born in the UK and am not Palestinian, so to be honest, I very rarely think about Palestine. I reckon it is of much more import to those of Palestininan/Arab backgrounds than to me.
I do nothing whatsoever to bring justice to Muslims in Palestine. I have enough on my plate here in the UK.
So why is the same comment, but this time transposed to Bengali Muslim victims of the genocide in 1971, acceptable when he makes it on the Guardian website?
This could very well just be a bit of fancy politically expedient footwork by Bunglawala. Would it be acceptable to the MCB, or indeed to any other Islamist organisation in the UK, if one of its senior members were to wash their hands, so callously, of the responsibility for seeking justice for Palestinians or any other “Muslim” cause?
But is this kind of indifference necessarily a bad thing?
In another sense Bunglawala should be congratulated for being honest about his apathy to Bengali Muslim victims of 1971.
His statement is liberating and should be celebrated. It now frees British Muslims of their obligation to loyalty to the Hamas or Hesbollah or the Islamic Republic of Iran etc, in exactly the same manner as Bunglawala does, by saying these words:
I was born in the UK and am not Palestinian/Syrian/Iranian/Kashmiri, so to be honest, I very rarely think about Palestine/Syria/Iran/Kashmir.
By using this simple ethical argument, British Muslims who choose to, can now detach themselves from the insidious emotional blackmail and moral upbraiding which is used to force them to side with this or that national/territorial cause of other Muslims, simply because they were their their co-religionists
If Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain can do it so can any British Muslim, and for this reason he should be applauded.
