From Tory journalist to Islam’s unlikely crusader

Peter Oborne’s polemic about how the West mistreats Muslims is brave and well-meant but he picks some questionable ‘heroes’

THE FATE OF ABRAHAM by Peter Oborne

528pp, Simon & Schuster, T £19.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP £25, ebook £15.99

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Peter Oborne was once, in his own words, a “conventional Conservative”. From a distinguished military family, Oborne became a Tory journalist, working at The Spectator and as a columnist for this newspaper, among others. But the Iraq War changed him. From then, he says, “I went mentally into opposition to the British state,” and, “concluded that many British journalists were actually instruments of power and part of a client media class” subservient to politicians. He wrote excoriating books about New Labour.

Oborne is still a Conservative, but a distinct kind – a moralist in the vein of Dr Johnson, with a dash of the colonial governor who now wants to cleanse his imperialist sins. Just as Johnson toasted the slave rebellion in America, so Oborne has taken up the unpopular cause of British Muslims, who feel misrepresented by politicians and the newspapers.

The Fate of Abraham is a compendious and rather chaotic collection of history, journalism and reportage, but the through line is simple: the popular idea that there is a “clash of civilisations” between the West and Islam has resulted in failed wars abroad and shameful persecution at home. Recently, an American president tried (and partially succeeded in) banning Muslims from entering the country; in France, explicitly anti-Muslim candidates won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round of April’s presidential election.

Things aren’t so bad in Britain, but there are still worries. More than 50 per cent of the nation’s 3.4 million Muslims live in poverty and they are disproportionately represented in prison, usually for drug offences. Shocking acts, such as the murder of the MP David Amess by an Isis supporter, have heightened tensions.

Oborne’s sections on the US and France especially have some interesting nuggets. I knew about Thomas Jefferson’s interest in Islam (he owned a copy of the Koran), but not about his battles with Barbary pirates in North Africa – a precursor to the War on Terror, in Oborne’s telling. Similarly, we learn that French interior minister Gérald

Darmanin, who has accused even Marine Le Pen of being soft on Islam, is the grandson of an Algerian military officer who worked for the French, part of a group targeted as traitors after independence.

But for an author who wants to avoid a clash of civilisations, it seems odd to focus so much on where the West has been in conflict with Islam. There is a more positive story to be told: Oborne could have mentioned that the United States honours the Prophet Mohammed as a lawgiver in a frieze in the Supreme Court, that the Alhambra-inspired Grand Mosque in Paris is an architectural gem, and so on.

Oborne’s chapter on the UK is inevitably more granular. His analysis of the web of think tanks, politicians and journalists shaping the narrative around British Muslims is certainly eye-opening. The now defunct Quilliam Foundation, which claimed to deradicalise extremists of all stripes, was itself funded by US foundations linked to anti-Muslim extremists. Also instructive is Oborne’s analysis of how a simplistic narrative took over the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham schools (recently the subject of a popular New York Times podcast) and the grooming-gang child-abuse scandals. In both cases, a myopic focus on Islam as inherently the problem stigmatised a whole group.

Yet in his fierce defence of “underdog” Muslims, Oborne does end up in some odd company. Tunisian dissident Mohamed Ali Harrath, now resident in London, should, the author says, be regarded as a “hero”. Yet in a footnote, he admits that Harrath’s Islam Channel was censured by Ofcom for allowing a presenter to “condone marital rape and violence against women”. Oborne’s heart is clearly in the right place, but I wish he had been a bit more careful in who he lauds. There are other British Muslims he could have championed: for example, women fighting for their rights in relation to the state, as well as sexism within the community, at the same time.

To be a British Muslim is not always to be a victim. For a start, there is more religious freedom here, especially for minority sects, than in most Muslim countries. Over the past decade, Muslim politicians, sports stars and actors have become national icons.

If we are indeed living under a new McCarthyism, as Oborne argues, I suspect it will be a blip – if a painful one – in what we must hope is a long and rich future for Muslims in Britain.

More than 50 per cent of British Muslims live in poverty