”When this new Labour government came to power, it set a historical precedent in terms of welcoming the Muslims into the fold,” she said in an exclusive interview with Arab News. “Tony Blair made a huge amount out of the fact that he was learning the Qur’an and that he had a special relationship with the Muslim world. He led us to believe that this government would protect the interests of Islam and do something about Palestine.”

Uddin thinks that the Labour government and Britain’s reputation generally has suffered in the eyes of the Arab world and Muslim world. “Britain’s reputation was second to none, despite our colonialist history, and it has been deeply damaged,” she said.

Although Blair has continuously said that the attack on Iraq has nothing to do with Muslims, they themselves do not, says Uddin, see it that way

“In the eyes of the Muslim and Arab world, the British government by supporting Bush was warmongering. It is a very dangerous time for the Muslim world. Islam and the issue of terrorism have been so inextricably linked that those who need no further brainwashing had every confirmation that to be a Muslim was to be a terrorist.”

Uddin has regularly warned the Labour government of the possible results of an apparent betrayal of the Muslim community both in the UK and worldwide. In September 2002, she told the House of Lords that she had talked to leading moderate Muslim women in the Middle East and warned that it was believed in the Muslim world and the Arab world that the so-called war on terrorism “is a fight against Islam, no matter how much reassurance we give”.

She predicted then that if Britain and the US went to war with Iraq, “suicide bombing in the West Bank will become widespread elsewhere.”

“I believe we have no comprehension of the overwhelming feelings of anger growing in the modern Muslim world,” she announced to the Lords. “Based on somewhat old evidence and without the full sanction of UN backing and an inspectors’ report, I say: No intervention in Iraq in my name.”

Still supportive of Blair’s reputation as a statesman, she views his willingness to go along with the right-wing US administration as a combination of pragmatism and optimism.

“It pains me to see that our Labour administration is buying into this right-wing borderline imperialist organization,” she reflected, arguing that the Carlisle and Halliburton groups, arms and oil conglomerates with complex business connections with the executives of the Bush administration, “tell you everything you needed to know.”

“Tony Blair made the calculation that he could not afford to let America go on alone, for fear of the implications for the UK. Moreover, he may have thought that he could save the world from the mass hysteria of the US administration, who think of themselves as global policemen and the only global power.”

She speculated that Blair saw himself as some sort of check or balance against the US. “If that was his ambition,” she said, “then he has failed dismally. We have been railroaded by America and the American administration that is so right-wing that they should have been our worst nightmare.”

Uddin has experience at grass roots in the Muslim community of Britain. Before her elevation to the House of Lords, she worked as a youth and community worker, senior social services officer and local government adviser.

“I don’t think the war was ever about morality,” she said.

“How can it ever be moral to kill women and children, destroy a sovereign nation and flout international law? How many bombs and depleted uranium munitions on the people of Iraq is acceptable for a moral crusade?”

A further indicator of a lack of a central morality in the arguments for aggression against Iraq, in her opinion, is the fact that the Labour government does not have a principled stand on the issue of Palestine.

Blair maintained that Britain would be taken seriously if it were at the heart of the discussion and standing shoulder to shoulder with the US. The UN, initially at least, was apparently of fundamental importance to the British government and essential in any decision to attack Iraq.

“When Blair went to the US last week, he exhorted Bush to bring the European Community and the UN into the fold — we were kicked in the teeth.”