By Madeleine Bunting and Barbie Dutter

445 words

20 April 1996

The Guardian

RADICAL British Muslims could be further marginalised by the death of the community leader Kalim Siddiqui, senior members of the community said yesterday.

As plans were made for Mr Siddiqui's open-air funeral service in Slough, after his death in South Africa on Thursday, many expressed concern that he leaves behind no obvious successor to speak for the radical section of the Muslim community, increasingly frustrated by what they perceive to be widespread religious discrimination.

"He spoke directly to a militant British-born Muslim generation who had lost the traditional respect for British institutions and were deeply disillusioned with organisations like the Commission for Racial Equality."

The fear is that this constituency will turn to even more radical groups such as Hizb ut Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun Immigrants to express their frustration.

Mr Siddiqui's legacy was being bitterly contested yesterday among Muslims. Some argued that he was an irreplaceable loss, others that he was a self-propagandist who had no influence outside the Western media.

His support for the Iranian revolution and the fatwa (death sentence) on the author Salman Rushdie received widespread media coverage, and he came to characterise the perception of Islam as arrogant and anti-democratic.

"He had more influence over non-Muslims than Muslims, and it damaged race relations," said one Muslim leader who did not wish to be named. "He offered British Muslims a mirage of being a separate state within a state. It was a simple way to define us as a minority: you don't belong. But it is unrealistic."

Mr Siddiqui's death comes at a critical juncture for the Muslim Parliament, which he founded in 1992 as a focus for the deeply fragmented Islamic community, just as a new - more moderate - national body for Muslims is to be launched by Iqbal Sacranie, a Home Office adviser on Muslim affairs.

Most believe the parliament will survive, but in the bitter jockeying for position in the community and in its relations with government it could be marginalised.

Mr Siddiqui belonged to a transition generation of immigrants establishing a British Muslim identity, Sahib Mustaqim Belehr, general secretary of the Islamic Party of Great Britain, believes.

"Even though Dr Siddiqui advanced the ghetto idea with his Muslim Parliament, he also broke out of it by reaching out with his message to beyond the ghetto: we can be heard, we can make an impact," he said.