format_quote Originally Posted by
Born_Believer
This was reported about 12-18 months ago in one of the 3 newspapers I read (the guardian, the indy and the telegraph, can't remember which but likely the former 2) and in that same time frame, I have friends who have gone into teaching and they have also been "debriefed" on what to look out for, one of which is children who talk about their Islamic practices.
Okay, that certainly is a problem, if they're simply looking for Islam. That isn't supposed to be the thing to identify and counter.
Quick question. If they were more properly looking for extremism- with changes being made as necessary- can you see that working well, as long as the right things are being looked for?
Now, my point is a very simple one. If you treat a community which has done nothing wrong, as criminals, you will create an environment of "us against them". We have seen this with the rise of fascism in Europe several times before, we are seeing it again now in the 21st century. The facts remain as I have already posted on here: those who are from practicing muslim backgrounds are the least likeliest to be radicalised yet it is mosques and madrasahs (Islamic schools) which have been most targeted by the British government. Now muslim children en masse are being targeted.
The prison population in the UK does have strong Islamic representation though, although this is due to a complex series of factors. One- about one in eight incarcerated Muslims in the UK were not born in the UK. Two- quite a lot of prisoners are incarcerated as some other religion, then convert to Islam (and this is very often a weak form of Islam that doesn't translate into serious practice). Three, the UK Muslim population skews very much in a younger direction, a bit more in the poor direction, and very much in the unemployed direction where young males are concerned. A lot goes into this other than just religion, and it's worth pointing out that recidivism for Muslims is almost 10 points lower than it is for everyone else, which is a good thing- that means Muslim prisoners, once they get out of prison, are less likely to reoffend. So there's a lot going on here, it's complex, there is a large amount of Muslims in UK prisons but it's not entirely what it appears to be on the surface.
With that being said, there is one other figure that's a bit more straightforward. Although Muslims in the UK make up about 10% of the youth population, almost 20% of the 10-17 "secure youth estate" prison population is Muslim. It seems to me that in general, the aim of this youth program is to figure out how to talk to kids and set them on the right path before they do anything that would put them exactly there, in the secure youth estate. Yes it's clearly flagging Muslims a lot more than anyone else, but it seems like a preventive measure rather than something that would cause Muslim children to commit crimes (which they currently do at disproportionate rates in this age group, again for reasons that may have nothing to do with Islam but that is the outcome that's happening). And this is the outcome being seen in the 10-17 age group of a relatively very-young population group, it might be a good idea to at least try and nip this in the bud.
I suppose this is the main thing for me. I don't see how being flagged, and evaluated, and potentially talked Out Of extremism....leads to Muslim kids committing crimes. Do you really think this leads to more crimes being committed, even though it's supposed to prevent them? Or are you suggesting that it has absolutely no effect, aside from being a giant irritation for a community?
This is a source, by the way.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31794599
This brings me to another issue and that is the issue of ISIS and how much of a threat it supposedly is. We are told that 1500 people left Britain to join ISIS and that 800 supposedly made it to Syria. There are 2.7 million muslims in the UK. If I take the raw 1500 number, that equates to only 0.06% of the British Muslim population on the verge of joining ISIS.
Okay, couple of things. One- barely more than half of those who left the UK to join Daesh actually made it there. Why didn't all 1500 people make it there? The answer is quite simple. Lots of people are trying very hard to prevent this from happening. This is what happens in spite of every reasonable effort to stop it. Two- how many Christians left the UK in order to join a terror organization bent on global domination? Zero. That threat does not exist. And three- this was touched on in the initial source that I gave, but there has been a more recent trend in recruitment of younger kids, quite a bit younger than 18, more like the 12-16 range. This is a more recent trend, and granted kids that young are even less able to navigate international travel on their own, but this is an especially vulnerable age group that can be talked into some bad stuff a lot more easily than anyone else. Don't we want something in place that helps push back against a real threat that is increasingly specific to them? And by them, yes I mean Muslims, because Catholic and Anglican kids are not being targeted in this manner.
Over 99% of the British population do not have such designs, or at the very least, do not feel strongly enough to leave Britain for it. This isn't just a minority, this is a minority, within a minority, baked inside a niche. Yet, for the sake of this minority, millions of pounds each year are being spent on so called de-radicalisation programs which target, abuse, mistreat and ciminalises a population which is largely peaceful, law abiding and increasingly well educated/well endowed with finances. Does that sound like the healthy or right thing to do?
I'm not entirely sure if UK Muslims are more law abiding than anyone else, I very well know the unemployment situation is relatively bad and that two-thirds of UK Muslims occupy the lower one-third of the UK economic scale. But that could be improving, and it's not at all uncommon for a new immigrant population to be less well off at first, and it well could be that UK Muslims are coming along faster than some other people have been able to do. Again, it's a complex situation and it's difficult to boil it down to a single data point. With that being said....
How exactly does any of this kid-related stuff qualify as targeting, abusing, mistreating, and criminalizing? Targeting I get, it's mostly Muslim kids that are talked to. But what is it about the talking and the evaluation process that qualifies as abuse? What is abusive about it? From what I can understand, they're being told not to be extremists and evaluated in order to see if further measures should be taken....measures that don't involve any abuse or mistreatment as far as I know, and all of this seems to be a non-criminalized form of corrections that is meant to keep kids out of jail and keep them from getting any sort of record. To my knowledge, this is done by:
1) Talking to kids, about not being extremists.
2) Talking to kids in a more focused manner with parental consent and the assistance of mental health professionals, about not being extremists.
3) Kids stay out of jail and out of trouble. And if they were going to do that anyway, they still do that.
Do you really think there's a different chain of events, where this particular program is concerned, that will do the opposite of what's intended?
Take anti-terror arrest numbers from Jan 2015-Sept 2015: 315 arrests were made, only half of those were charged by the police and only 34 were eventually prosecuted in court. Almost 10 times as many people are arrested on suspicion of terrorism (all of them Muslim btw) than have actually committed a crime. This is what happens when you target an entire community, paranoia seeps into very aspect of society, including the police force, the same force which is supposed to be upholding the law not using it out of irrational fear or an enemy that doesn't exist. These arrests probably also include paranoid citizens who phone in if they've seen a muslim acting suspiciously...maybe he grew his beard too long or something
On one hand, ISIS is an actual terrorist organization that actually exists in the Muslim world, and in a way that terrorists organizations for other religions don't really exist in the West. On the other hand, that's a good point about Muslims being unfairly targeted, arrested on suspicion of a crime and never charged, feeling as if law enforcement and everyone else is suspicious of you at all times....because they actually are....
My question is, what happens as a result of this? What do Muslims do when everyone is overly suspicious of them, when they're quickly targeted for arrest and so forth?
My other question is this. Do you see the distinction between adults being arrested unfairly, and kids who are Not arrested at all, but instead questioned and talked to as if someday they Might be, in an effort to make sure they don't get arrested?
I guess that last part is really my whole thing with all of this. I see this kids program as an honest effort to prevent Muslim kids from every going to jail, and I think it has a good shot at doing what it's supposed to. My question is, what connection do you see between this particular program and an increase in Muslims being arrested? Is that the connection you see, kids get talked to at school and then later they get arrested? Because the connection I see is that kids get talked to a lot, sometimes for the wrong reasons but without any threat of arrest and always with the intent of preventing legal trouble later in life, and it can be expected to pretty much work that way. That's what I'm seeing. Why do you see it so differently?