UK Muslims Launch Body to Promote Secular Democracy

London (CNSNews.com) - It's time for the "silent majority" of British Muslims to be heard over the noise made by religious extremists, speakers launching a new community organization in Britain said on Thursday.

A small group of radicals had hijacked the image of British Muslims, activists said at the launch of British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD).

Nasreen Rehman, a playwright and writer who is one of the group's founders, said that she was tired of non-Muslims wondering why she wasn't veiled, or why she was a working woman who hadn't gone through an arranged marriage and who was, in fact, divorced.

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1950s, she said, she had experienced a degree of freedom that might be unthinkable today, with a father who treated her as an equal.

Rehman said Pakistan had been radicalized, in part, because of the campaign by the U.S.-supported mujahedeen fighters against the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In Britain, she argued, people have a distorted picture of British Muslims partly because militants and their activities make "good copy" for the media. Muslims account for roughly 1.6 million of the 58 million total population.

Rehman said a turning point had come for her in 2005, when a British teenager sued her local school authority for the right to wear a jilbab, a dress that exposes only the face and hands and which the teen claimed her religion compelled her to wear.

Rehman said the outfit had no basis in Islamic tradition."All Muslims knew there was no such thing as Islamic dress," she said. "I had sleepless night thinking about my daughters," and the effect such radicalization may have of their future.

The BMSD plans in the months ahead to promote the view that most British Muslims embrace democracy, while addressing the influence of religious radicalism.

Inayat Bunglawala, a political commentator who is also assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said Thursday that only a "tiny fringe of activists" in the Muslim community wanted to see secular democracy.

The BMSD launch came just days after another organization was formed with similar goals.

Launched at a London press conference, the Quilliam Foundation said its aim was to combat the influence of extreme Islamist ideology.

Leaders of the new think tank are mostly former members of the British chapter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organization that promotes the creation of a caliphate, uniting Muslims around the world under Islamic law. They say their experience in the group equips them to argue effectively against extremist ideology.

Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment this week on the new organization's launch.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is currently publicizing a mobilization campaign in Britain called "Stand For Islam," aimed at challenging what spokesman Taji Mustafa called "the vicious media and political onslaught against Islam and Muslims."

Mustafa said in a statement it was time to question the capitalist system and liberal western values associated with it.

"Our campaign will show the sublime values of Islam and the ability of the Islamic system to solve modern problems," he said. "The Muslim world is crying out for Islam."

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