Please, no more double standards!

Looking at our ever more perilous world, where new chasms open up daily between Islam and the West, you would think that politicians, non-governmental organizations and worthy bodies committed to building civic, non-violent societies would make it their priority to engage with European Muslims, particular those with reformist sentiments and agendas. The shock waves which have followed since the Salman Rushdie affair in 1988, culminating in the attacks on 11 September, should have told perceptive people that without deep, genuine and informed political and intellectual engagement with enlightened Muslims, chaos, and further chaos, is guaranteed.

After an initial flutter last autumn, when this seemed to be happening, at least in the West, we are sliding back again and fast into brute ignorance and beefy talk which shows how little human beings learn from cataclysms. Look at the recent trends: Blair illegitimately pushing for war on Iraq, his lieutenant David Blunkett with his dumb and dangerous comments on the "maniacs" (he was describing Muslims who are peacefully protesting against the unbelievably harsh sentences imposed on first-time offenders among the rioters in Bradford last summer, men who confessed and were handed in by their law-abiding families), the arrests and trials of so-called terrorists which produce no convictions, the calculated promotion by some powerful editors of the most colorful extremists - the editor of Radio 4's Today programme tells us he admires honest Abu Hamza, the mullah of Finsbury Park, because he expresses openly his anti-Western views and because he takes his children to the parks.

Such rashness, such stupefaction only serves to convince thoughtful Muslims that in truth the powerful only know how to relate to three kinds of Muslims: (a) the psychotics - they entertain and horrify in equal measure; (b) the agitators - those who are forever warning of social disorder and have to be placated; (c) the malleables - people who can be bought or coaxed into saying the right thing in public.

I speak not as any kind of "representative" but as someone who does try to speak to a wide range of Muslims in this country, most of whom are getting increasingly bitter that they are simply never invited to participate in the invaluable exchanges which take place within politics and behind the scenes at all those networking opportunities where so much of our collective destiny is decided. As one Muslim heart surgeon put it: "These power merchants, they don't know us even now. They have no idea of the steaming discussions going on in our sitting rooms, the high level of intellectual debates, the absolutely different views we may have. They talk among themselves and then bring on the puppets to endorse things, giving them a medal here or a position there - they love these noddies, nodding 'Yes Sir', smiling like idiots. The West is not interested in intelligent Muslims. Like in the empire, that is the last thing they want."

I agree completely. I have had it with apologists who think that Muslims, whatever they do, only do these foul things because they are upset, humiliated, angry, despised and maltreated. There is no excuse big enough to explain the actions of cold-eyed slaughterers who descend on helpless Christians in Muslim states; the men who cut the throat of Daniel Pearl, the young Jewish American journalist; the grisly crowds in Nigeria who want to stone to death a young mother; the gang rape of children which is ordered as "punishment" by Muslim tribal leaders in Pakistan; the people who danced in the streets to see exploded bits of Americans and others.

I cannot stomach Muslim leaders and writers who jump up when there are signs of injustice against us (discrimination against Muslims is a serious problem, no doubt about that) but who never speak out to denounce outright the various discriminations which ruin the lives of common people (regardless of color or creed) in various parts of the world.

How refreshing it would be to get just one of them doing what the Chief Rabbi has just done. After too long prevaricating, Jonathan Sacks openly criticized the policies of Israel with all the deep love of an insider. Maybe I just miss these speeches; maybe they are never reported; but reformist Muslims would dearly like to hear our religious leaders taking such an ethical stand instead of hiding behind Islamophobia. If we berate the West for its double standards on Israel, we must also have the honesty to condemn double standards that Muslims use. And please no more pious speeches about what "true" Islam says, as if that condones what real Islamicists all too often do. Marxists too wasted many years explaining that Soviet communism was not the real thing, instead of fighting the version which came to dominate so many countries.

To ignore reformist Muslims is to abandon hope for any of us in the future. What do I mean by reformist? I mean people who see that there are universal principles of rights, freedoms, democracy and justice which apply as much to Muslims as others. I mean people insulted by the idea that they must be "tolerated" and who have the brains and guts to engage fully as democratic citizens.

I mean risk takers such as Zaki Badawi, the wise Egyptian head of the Muslim College who offered Salman Rushdie sanctuary in his home in the week following the fatwa. Or Ghiyassudin Siddique, leader of the once infamous "Islamic Parliament", who today boldly attacks the Government as well as the treatment of women in many Muslim families. I mean young Muslims like the young university student, Sama, who wrote to me last week to say: "I think we must be brave enough to say that no religion can continue to be relevant if it remains ahistorical. We live in a world where certain important values were not part of that old world. We must adapt or die."

Thinkers around the world are coming up with the same message. At a conference I attended in Geneva earlier this year, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'am, a Muslim academic based in the US, said about Sharia law: "While I believe Sharia notions of jihad were appropriate for that historical context, they are no longer acceptable or workable now ... even the most restrictive view of its causes and manner are categorically illegal and politically untenable in the modern context."

Islam has only five fundamental, absolute principles, which I strive to live by. These are belief in Allah, prayer (an obligation I try to meet as best I can), charity, fasting and Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca). The last I hope to go on when I feel myself to be worthy enough. None of these is incompatible with my belief in free choice, gender equality, democracy and a secular state.

The good news is that a growing number of Muslims in the West are moving in this direction and doing so with a new confidence. Since 11 September, they believe that they can liberate themselves from what had become an over-proscribed life. Let's face it, the Taliban brand of Islam is not easily marketed today even among the most ardent. But these same Muslims have also liberated themselves from that obsequiousness that you find among the traditionalists who desperately want Mr. Tony to shake their hands. This may intimidate the powerful, but unless they start to do business with the new reformists, the world will fragment even more than it did a year ago.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a writer for The Independent Newspaper based in United Kingdom.