Five things I realised as a Muslim after the Manchester attacks There is something twisted about targeting a concert full of children – it tells you how morally lost these people […]

There is something twisted about targeting a concert full of children – it tells you how morally lost these people are.

These events are meant to be moments of unfiltered joy, a moment to witness your idol in the flesh and preserve it in your memory. But on Monday, an Ariana Grande performance turned from a night of joy into a night of terror.

First London and now Manchester. And as society discusses how to solve it, more and more, I find myself holding certain parts of the Muslim community in utter contempt. Yesterday I was talking to another Muslim where we both voiced our frustrations, and I realised the following things:

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1) You will never reform this community while its held under the toxic grasp of a group of people who try to keep Muslim focus on Middle East rather than Britain. Lot of Muslims just don’t see Britain as their home – it’s why they’re more obsessed with Palestine than the NHS. This explains partly why there’s such an obsession with foreign policy (something George Galloway understands come election time) and why integration of Muslims is so poor.

We culturally isolate ourselves because to integrate is to apparently lose your Muslim identity and become western Many Muslims don’t see Britain as their home, end of.

2) Liberal Muslims have been given a toxic name within the community by a combination of terrible public image on the part of Quilliam Foundation (which fails to engage with the Muslim grassroots, and is therefore not trusted) and a perception within this community, that to be liberal is a contradiction of the faith. Some believe this mean being a “colonised Muslim”, or brainwashed by western liberalism. We are the only ones who actually recognise that there are things both government and community can do.

3) Muslims forever pin everything on foreign policy. A hundred years from now (if Jihadists persist) people will blame the Iraq War still. A lot of these Muslim activists tend to be middle class, who can economically survive the discrimination the rest of us can’t. They’ll continue the charade and other Muslims will fall for it and praise them for being such clever, brave and noble spokespersons for the Muslim community.

4) They also play heavy on a siege mentality. Islamophobia is awful and growing, but Muslims are NOT oppressed. Groups like MEND, CAGE, 5Pillars are quick to ask questions of others but seldom wonder if there are things the community can do internally to help integration and diffuse risk of extremism.

When all you do is hype about Islamophobia and foreign policy, you’ll play a part in helping extremists to convince young Muslims that there’s a war on the Muslim identity and that this isn’t home.

5) And more personally I’ve realised this: these aren’t my people. I have nothing in common with people who see an atrocity and say “what about Syria?” or people who refuse to accept that aspects of their ideology – based on rejection of tolerance – contributes to a hatred of the west by creating a counter-identity for these people. If they can’t find a home and belonging in the west, they’ll find it in an Islamist group.

Let’s not fall into the trap laid out by the far right of saying all Muslims are terrorists, because we’re not. But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking there’s a sincere effort on large parts of this community to actually root out extremism. Because for that to happen, we’d have to accept that years of propaganda about foreign policy were wrong. We’d have to accept that our own ideology was taken and used for murderous means.