It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and flies like a duck. And yet it insists that it is not a duck. This is the image that comes to mind when watching those anti-cartoon marches in western capitals, including London, in the name of Islam.

Isn’t Islam supposed to be a religion? Shouldn’t it be concerned with the broader issues of human existence rather than with a set

of cartoons, a Dutch television documentary, the head-covers of French schoolgirls or a novel by a British-Indian author? Today the visible Islam, the loudest Islam, is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Many mosques in this country have been transformed into political clubs where Kashmir, Iraq and Palestine and “the misdeeds

of Anglo-Saxon imperialism” have replaced issues of religious faith as the principal theme.

Not long ago when I asked an imam in a London mosque why it was that God hardly featured in his sermons, he thought I had lost the plot. “What matters today is the suffering of our brethren under occupation,” he snapped.

In other words: in our Islam we don’t do God, we do Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq.

That is not all. This political Islam also has grievances about aspects of British and more broadly European domestic politics. It is unhappy that gays and lesbians are allowed to live without hindrance. It does not like the way women are allowed to “get cheeky” and even argue with their menfolk.

It is scandalised by the West’s “corruption and debauchery” and that there is no “moral force” to set strict limits to individual liberties.

“We have no religious grievances in this country,” said Azam Tamimi, a pro-Hamas British Muslim scholar. “Here we can practise our religion with more freedom than in any Muslim-ruled country. It is therefore natural that we should focus on political rather than religious issues.”

There are at least three reasons for the excessive politicisation of Islam in the West.

The first is that Muslims in the West come from a wide variety of ethnic, sectarian and cultural backgrounds. Many have long histories of sectarian feuds in their homelands. Since those feuds cannot be continued here they tend to minimise the religious aspects of Islam and emphasise the political themes that can unite them.

For example, no Sunni Muslims could ever agree with a Qaderi or a Jaafari Muslim on key theological issues. But all three hate gay marriages and can unite in a march against Israel.

The second reason is that the public expression of Islam is controlled by political groups and parties that are often banned in the Muslim world itself.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Tree stump 'shows image of Virgin Mary'
• BBC drops Strictly judge for younger model
• Trafalgar Square 'reduced to a spectacle'