The Gap widens and more and more Muslims are being left behind. And so on this truculent wet day, I wonder how on earth can Muslims in their communities begin to empower themselves to be Masters of their own destinies. And that is the nub of it. In Iraq, the average Joe, or should I say Mo, is left hanging between a immoral invasion, sectarian gangsters, rebels and inept political leadership - the institutions of the state have failed. The upshot is that Iraq, is like carrion being picked apart by hungry scavengers, and not all of them foreign. The same can be said about Afghanistan. Instead of inept politicians, substitute them with inept political war lords. In this harsh unforgiving environment how can they empower themselves to improve their own lives?

In Pakistan, President Musharraf saw the state's authority confronted by the ‘extremists’ of the Lal (Red) Mosque, and decided to smash it and its leadership. The fault of the confrontation and the deaths can only be placed at the door of the now dead Imam Abdul Ghazi and his 'master of disguise’ brother, the burka-wearing Abdul Aziz. However the ultimate mistake was that President or General Musharraf did not develop the democratic institutions that could adapt to change. After all, if someone wanted to be empowered and tackle a social issue or take on a moral cause against for example ‘prostitution or porn’ (and MPACUK is not saying the people accused by the followers of the Lal Mosque were guilty of being prostitutes or selling porn), there simply is no avenue to do that. Pakistan is a dictatorship with no peaceful way of making changes. The President did not nurture or grow the democratic institutions that would allow the country to accept dissenting political voices and channel them in a constructive manner. The ability to empower yourself is limited in Pakistan, where deference to military power is the only way to get ahead.

In the Arab world, all it takes is a small European newspaper, in a small European country, with a small readership to print banal pictures of the Prophet (pbuh) and all hell is let loose with street riots, scores of people dead and lots of negative media images that concentrated the western mind of Islam as irrational and uncompromising. I can’t help but wonder could the Danish cartoons protests have been handled better - was there any need to riot? How many cartoons are worth a human life? What of the inhuman police officers who without repercussion or remorse opened fire on the protesters? What does it say about the Muslims in whatever country they are from, who tacitly accept those protestors' deaths and then surprisingly blame Denmark, while knowing it was an Arab policemen who aimed and fired the deadly volley! The cartoons riots were not empowering. If anything they demonstrated the mass impotence of the protestors. The more insipid the repercussions the louder the protests.

The truth is that the mindset in an Arab or Muslim country is one where rage plays well. The psyche is one of hollow rage, howls of rage which are in fact signs of disenfranchisement and anger at everyone except themselves, except their masters, anger at their predicament. That psyche can be seen in Juma (Friday) prayers where oration is widely seen as entertainment, the message and Imams have become mere religious entertainers, wowing the crowd with platitudes and tub thumping. In their defence, if you were an Imam criticising the Egyptian Government, you might find yourself hanging upside down with electrodes attached to more then your finger tips. No, the Imams take the path of least resistance (and some would argue the lesser of two evils), and talk in high rhetoric that ensures the congregation does nothing. The anger can never be channeled peacefully as empowerment comes from the barrel of a gun. The ideology of confronting the west and confronting the east that is taking form is fueled by a huge anger at being exposed as impotent.

And so while some Muslims in the west can see the divergence and slowly and surely watch the Muslim world slip into a dark unknown place, where any form of extremism is justified in the name of Islam, unrecognisable and alien, and a threat to moderation and co-existence, these confrontational ideologies are gaining ground and we need to ask why.

It is not the ideology that is attractive - nothing is more attractive to the masses then to become middle class, have a good job, good education for their children, plentiful food and an improving quality of life. Extremism is gaining ground and adherents, because of the West's incompetent and cynical foreign policy and Muslim Governments' domestic tyranny, there is no democratic way of changing government policy in most Muslim countries. Pressure groups are ignored, news papers censored, and the judiciary is corrupted (Pakistan, suprisingly, has bucked the trend). People will resort to extreme measures and rash ideologies to bring about change. In this environment dissent is obliterated on both sides and the middle path is a chasm that neither side will take.

While the empathy gap widens, Muslims in the west will continually be asked to justify the unjustifiable. They will continually be asked to explain the unexplainable and more worryingly they will continue to be linked with the lowest common denominator interpretation of Islam. Islamophobia will rise and all the while either state-sponsored Islam impotent and pliant or opposition groups who are rage-filled and reactionary are being pushed down the throats of British Muslims. Only a few voices have broken free, Azam Tamimi and Tariq Ramadan notably, but on the whole western Islamic scholars have been drowned out, and new thinkers relegated to supporters of bankrupt eastern scholars.

So what can we do? For decades, after the initial emigration of Muslim to the west, we continued to import the village idiots who became our community leaders. People accepted the tripe they were fed, without questioning the context, and how the application and interpretation of religion is adaptable to the country. We didn’t question what community fashioned the Islamic view we were being taught as authentic, we didn’t question the shaping factors behind Tabligui Jamat, Brewlwies, Salafies, etc, We imported people who could neither understand the Islamic concepts being practiced in the west of accountability, democracy, equality, or the moderating consequences of bad publicity, bad policies. We imported people whose world view remained steadfast in the place they had come from and rejected any influence from Western society as immoral or innovation in religion.

Now we are Western Muslims in the 21st Century and we can demand accountability and democratic leadership from whichever group we belong to. We can demand these principles and ensure they are adopted, and slowly but surely, the cultural export will begin. The interconnected nature of Tabligui Jamaat will result in ideas and practices being exported back to India and Pakistan, and their branches in the United States; Sufis in Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan will have to accept that mystics and meditation is not the pinnacle of Islam, it is merely a route to a greater good. And Salafies will be held accountable and with Allah’s Will, demand to be held accountable.

This western export of noble Islamic principles together with the lobbying Muslims will stop tin pot tyrants being propped up against the will of the people and result in an Islamic renaissance and rejuvenation that can once again demonstrate the beauty and dignity of Allah’s Word. If this Muslim cultural export fails, then all that will happen is that the oppressed will rise up, and Muslims in the West will be caught between a hostile Europe who sees Muslims as terrorists and a suspicious East who sees western Muslims as spies and morally weak.

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