What's the right way for UK Muslims to persuade extremists to stop being extremists?

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

Lol, why is your conversation almost always encrypted? if it was plain and straightforward i could try to make sense of it ...

Well, the vocabulary in use in the field sound inaccessible, but it isn't really. It is just a question of getting used to it. All I am trying to say, is that it is worth trying to do that.

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

...one thing you should be aware of though is the fact that computers can decrypt most conversations based on patterns ...

Well, cryptography is very real and it may not be perfect, but it seems to work.
Cryptography rests on claiming the existence of "intractable" problems.
But indeed, "intractable" does not mean "unsolvable".
But then again, what is the alternative to using intractable problems to prevent adversaries from reading secret information?
Maybe just let them read it ... ? Dunno about that one either! ;-)

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

Digital currency as i said earlier is a banking industry scam that wouldn't take seconds for certain groups to crash, reboot, and hack before defence systems were up and running.

Well, the bitcoin blockchain has now been up for seven years, representing over 10 billion dollars in bitcoin. So, the idea that they would crash it in "seconds" is a bit of stretch ...
The security of bitcoin rests on intractable problems. So, that brings us back to square one.
What is your alternative? To use ordinary, interest/riba-infested banks and let the government control your financial transactions? Sorry, but that is a non-starter ...

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

In terms of military maneuvers ...

If you had the right information and prevented the adversary from getting the right information, you would be able to do with a very small knife that what would otherwise require a gun. Therefore, to an important extent, guns reflect stupidity. The bigger the weapons that the combatants use, the dumber they look. Seriously, I do not need any armoured vehicles. I just need to know where exactly yours is; and I need to prevent you from knowing where exactly I am; then, it is game over already. All the big weapons that you can see around you, reflect the stupidity of the ones using it, and the gullibility and lack of insight of the ones impressed by them.

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

The real currency is just that - it's primary and it's not an alternative, it is physical rare metal coinage and bullion ...

Yes, I totally agree that rare metals and bullion are valid currency.
However, in all practical terms. how do you cross a border with 1 million dollars in gold in your pockets?
It is trivially easy for me to send you 1 million dollars from where I am. Can you do the same with your gold?
So, I have 1 milion dollars in gold. I sell them for bitcoins. I send the bitcoins to you. Now, you sell your bitcoins for 1 million dollars in gold.
In other words, I physically moved 1 million dollars in gold without ever crossing a customs office.
How else did you intend to do the same?

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

... the believers separate their economies from the false economies of the disbelievers ...

That is not difficult to achieve. Just don't buy/sell anything that is haram. Where is the difficulty in achieving this? You can do that right now, if you want.

format_quote Originally Posted by Abz2000

... only accept physical metals or grain if trading with kuffaar ...

Yes, but you may have to triangulate over virtual currencies, because otherwise, it will be way too easy to attack your money transports.

You are creating a very serious security problem by moving gold physically. National States have long-standing hobby to attack anybody who hoards or transports bullion: EXECUTIVE ORDER 6102, April 5th 1933



I think that you may underestimate the adversary, and that you may not be entirely aware of what you are up against. In the anti-Statist, libertarian constellation, we staunchly believe, and know for a fact that we will defeat the National States. However, we also know that we will not be able to achieve that with methods that are too simplistic or too easy to defeat. Your gold movements are sitting ducks for the National States. You will be overly burdening your defense mechanisms, just with the protection of gold stores and gold transport. In my impression, your approach is simply too costly.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

Buy Bitcoin! It is halal, it's very halal ...

I have never made that claim. I leave it up to the ulema to assess that.
I have made the claim, however, that the interest/riba-infested banks are haram. But then again, you can find so many fatwas confirming that, that you do not have to take my word for it.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

...and so friendly to terrorists and to the black market (prostitution, drugs, weapons, anything) ...

Everything that has both halal and haram uses, is fundamentally halal. It is just a question of not using it in a haram way.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

Buy some Bitcoin today! He's basically a huckster who's trying to get you to buy something.

But not from me. I have never asked anybody to buy anything from me. Furthermore, I do not sell my bitcoins. I receive them, then I spend some small part of them for my living expenses, and then I hoard the remainder. So, you cannot buy bitcoins from me, because I already have bitcoin-to-fiat exchange methods for my living expenses that work really well. In other words, you would have to offer a substantially better method for me to be interested in trading with you. How would a bitcoin novice be able to immediately design such better method, just like that, out of the fricking blue? That would be utterly unthinkable ...

Seriously, unless you earn your income in bitcoin like I do, it is quite hard to get hold of bitcoins. There are always more people who need them than people who have them. That is the reason why their value keeps going up and up and up! ;-)

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

So you're a miner? You've got your computers crunching numbers and getting it that way? I've heard that it's become progressively more difficult to keep up with the technology race in this game, the problems get harder and in order to stay profitable you need more and more expensive equipment. It's gotten to the point where people need to team up, pool their resources and form a strategy together so they can all go in on a single system that's better than what any of them would be able to maintain individually, and then they split the profits. Pooled mining, I'm sure you're familiar with it. That's been going on for awhile, has your strategy evolved to that point yet? Assuming you're farming, of course.

I haven't done mining, actually. The secret is to use a cheap supply of electricity. You need almost no bandwidth, regardless of how much hashing power you deploy. So, it would probably be a money maker to put a farm in a desert with lots of solar panels, and with just a very narrow satellite connection.

Pooling resources is just a way to remove the variability in your income. There are quite a few pools that you can join, indeed. Since there is no point in mining more bitcoin than the cost of electricity that they represent, the market value of mined coins is equal to some kind of measure of electricity costs, it being understood that the cheapest electricity resources will be used first, until the cost of mining is the value of a coin. The solution for mining is clearly cheap solar (or similar). Concerning the equipment, you will have to use custom logic designs that specialize in sha256 hashing. If other people use better designs, you will consume too much electricity for the hashing rate produced.

But then again, I don't mine. I create/maintain software, and deal with software security issues, and I collect payment in bitcoins for that. So, that's how I get the coins. It is easier for me to do, since that's what I've done for decades, than to try to mine them. If you want to mine, you would need to focus on that problem quite a bit. Before you are into money, you will have to deal with serious headaches ... ;-)

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

So you're a miner?

You see, the miners do a very important job. They collectively deploy a gigantic, distributed, but still concealed amount of hashing power to enforce a unique version of the ledger. We also hide the location of the mining equipment by using the tor network. Nobody knows where they are. That is what protects the bitcoin ledger from attack, especially from governments. The anti-Statist libertarian bitcoin constellation has a multiple of the hashing power of all National States combined. That is what allows us to successfully enforce our views against them. National States cannot overrule us. That is the greatest success that we have achieved, ever. We are gradually but surely taking over banking from the National States, without any traces of contamination by riba/interest. Seriously, we are clearly winning.

format_quote Originally Posted by kritikvernunft

You see, the miners do a very important job. They collectively deploy a gigantic, distributed, but still concealed amount of hashing power to enforce a unique version of the ledger. We also hide the location of the mining equipment by using the tor network. Nobody knows where they are. That is what protects the bitcoin ledger from attack, especially from governments. The anti-Statist libertarian bitcoin constellation has a multiple of the hashing power of all National States combined. That is what allows us to successfully enforce our views against them. National States cannot overrule us. That is the greatest success that we have achieved, ever. We are gradually but surely taking over banking from the National States, without any traces of contamination by riba/interest. Seriously, we are clearly winning.

Okay, that's cool, I understand that there's some things that aren't for public knowledge. What I have observed, though, is that there's plenty of miners who are very forthcoming with the fact that they belong to some kind of pool and that there's a certain number of estimated TB that they currently need in order to be successful.

What I'm actually curious to know is approximately how much money one person needs to spend on equipment, facilities, and electricity in order to be in the game and make some consistent progress on a regular basis. (Just as far as one person's expenses as part of a pool). Per month, at an estimate, what does it add up to when you factor in ongoing operating costs and the estimated amount you're likely to need (on average) in order to replace equipment and/or upgrade it? Of course you're spending money in order to make money, and I'm sure that everyone started off spending a little in order to make a little more, but what kind of point has it gotten to? Approximately how much do miners need to invest at this point in order to continue making money?

I hope this isn't a terribly intrusive question, I'm just looking for a round-number per-month estimate. I could probably find out somewhere else, but you're right here so why not.

[QUOTE]

format_quote Originally Posted by Search

Your data is directly and explicitly contradicted by Professor Arie Perliger's study at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center who showed that there were 337 incidents of right-wing violence each year in the decade after 9/11 causing a total of 254 fatalities. This study was done in 2012. Your data, however, is the more updated one with 5 additional instances of right-wing violence with 19 fatalities. Therefore, I'd say that ring-wing violence in the updated version would amount to 342 incidents of ring-wing violence and 273 fatalities.

I don't agree that it directly contradicts that, although there's clearly a different metric and methodology that's being used. For starters, my source appears to focus more strictly on deadly attacks, while yours appears to deal with violent attacks in general, even if innocent people were hurt rather than killed, even if the violent actor was killed before accomplishing all or part of his goal. That doesn't mean yours is wrong, it's just a different methodology (and less up to date) so it wouldn't be advisable to cross-pollinate the data as if the studies were the exact same thing but with slightly different parameters on the dates covered- that's not really the situation. This is the methodology from the source that I found. http://securitydata.newamerica.net/e...thodology.html
And here is a different dataset indicating who has been charged with plotting terrorism, whether it was carried out or not. http://securitydata.newamerica.net/e.../analysis.html
Please note that this pertains to indictments, rather than deadly attacks, and the number of indicted persons in this dataset is much higher, we're looking at over 500 people now in the same time frame. And this time, the number of people indicted for extremist activities are heavily jihadist by a 2 to 1 margin. So to your point, despite engaging in fewer deadly attacks (although these attacks are more deadly on average), there are way more jihadist extremists getting indicted before they are necessarily able to bring off a deadly attack. This is worth pointing out, because to a certain extent it would seem that Far Right extremists are able to to whatever they want and with very little attention from national security, relatively speaking. It's also worth pointing out because I'm agreeing with something that you've said and treating it as useful information that should be acted on in basically the way that you describe.

Not only that, your data specifically only showed far right fatalities in comparison to Muslim attacks which of course fails to include other types of attacks like the Aurora shooting and Sandy Hook shooting and other types of shooting that have since occurred in the U.S.

That is an acceptable comparison, for anyone who's interested in a direct, apples to apples comparison of jihadist terror to Far Right terror. Again, to your point though, you're quite right to say that US law enforcement and US national security is spending very nearly all of their time effort and energy on stopping every jihadist threat possible, and these are the attacks that have come to pass despite that. By comparison, and by the assessment of law enforcement itself, the Far Right is not getting much attention at all and they are (comparatively) able to do just about anything they want, and this is the outcome. Just so we're clear, I'm looking at these jihadist numbers as the best possible outcome that we could have possibly gotten, given the vast resources and energy that have been expended in preventing them. When I look at the Far Right attacks, I see near limitless potential for improving on this outcome if national security can devote some of their attention and resources to preventing it (or even properly understanding it and how it's developing), which they are currently not doing to any large extent.

However, even allowing for only the above (minus other attacks like Aurora shooting and Sandy Hook because they are not right-wing attacks), I'd say that when calculated percentage-wise, that amounts to 2.92%. Let's, however, round that up to 3%.

It would really help if you could make an apples-to-apples comparison and stay within a single study and a single methodology. Of course it makes sense to compare the death toll of one ideology to that of another ideology, that's just how this is done. It's roughly the same reason why you don't compare ideology-motivated killings to death by natural causes. You compare ideologies to each other in order to see which ideology is more deadly, and after that you take proportionality and existing prevention strategies into account.

Now, taking your own words amended correctly with the above study: "....is 3 noticeably greater than 1%?"

You have to torture the numbers quite a bit in order to get yourself to 3%, but yes actually 3% is significantly larger than 1%. You really enjoy taking my words and replacing some of them, don't you? Argument by Mad Libs, I suppose.

In your own words reversed back at you:

That's more than a little snarky by you, and you've been doing quite a bit of this. Be advised, when you present your argument in this way I read the rest of it carefully (if at all) less than half the time.

The reason I mention this is that if you take into account all of the shootings and mass murders that have happened,

There's absolutely no reason to do that. I'm examining an ideology, so of course I'm going to compare it to other ideology-based murders. Ideology should account for zero killings, or something very close to it. We need to treat that as a reasonable and realistic goal. It really doesn't work that way with many of the ways in which people die.

This really is about ideology, and not about race.

Finally, you are essentially fear-mongering about "deadliest" in terms of proportion of population while not taking into account the fact that that the Orlando club shooting is the only incident and real reason that drives the number up in your fatality data

It is the largest figure, but there are two others (which I mentioned) that were more deadly than the Dylann Roof shooting at the church in Charleston. I pointed that out. It does skew the average, but you're looking at a high median for the jihadists anyway.

whereas the Orlando's shooter's motives while being terrorism is also

Yes he did clearly pledge himself to ISIS, And along with that terrorist acts especially by self-starters (or the lone wolf, if you call it that) are almost always "also something else." It's rarely just one thing, but when it's clearly an act of terror done in the name of a terror group, that puts it in a categorical home. You can say other things about the people who are in that categorical home, but they don't leave the home. They stay right there.

Moreover, your fear-mongering is AGAIN, and I repeat, a SIGN of your prejudice. So, kindly, stop it.

I acknowledge your concern. I wish you showed a little more concern for your fellow Muslim forum member who just recently made some threats toward me involving the sword of Allah and the rise of a legitimate caliphate that will punish all the wrongdoers. And then there's the other guy who talks about stealing vast sums of money from the evil heathen national state, loves the idea of stabbing the national state in the back and really seriously wants to do it, and brags about how easy it would be for him to do it. Unless there's been some communication that I'm not able to see, you seem to have a bit of a hair-trigger with me while completely ignoring people around you who are walking the line just this side of language that would be of interest to Homeland Security.

Also, I think I'm going to start reporting your posts; you are welcome here to learn about Islam, but you are not welcome here to spread your prejudice.

When I started this thread, I was asking Muslims to give me an idea of what they would want to do in order to stop extremism within their own religion. I didn't get much from anyone, and I got even less from you. You clearly don't have an interest in assisting me with the original purpose of this thread, and when you said you were done with it and wouldn't post on it anymore, that was the right idea.

You mad? Fine. Go.

Also, I'd like to point out that if we take into account 9/11, which I know you have not done, but you did keep mentioning it, and it seemed were keen to take the tragedy into account. So, I'd like to tell you that there were 19 hijackers as reported by FBI in total. However, for those 2,996 American deaths (of whom 60 were Muslims) on September 11, we have killed 4 million people with the War on Terror. Is that fair? Are you satisfied? Because it is not "Christian" or "American" blood, it shouldn't matter, right? Because "might is right" as the saying goes.

When al Qaeda no longer exists, that will be enough. It's not about how many people get killed, there's no particular goal where that is concerned, the goal is the cessation of al Qaeda's existence. If al Qaeda transitions from being a terror organization to a more traditional political group, that would probably do that trick too. One way or another, al Qaeda with its present form and operation must no longer exist, and that may take another 10 to 20 years depending on a lot of things that may happen.

Even from your "Evangelical" perspective, you should at least, however, be able to see that is 4 million people with whom you are now never able to share the "good news" of the gospel.

That's being offset by all these externally displaced refugees, who have been forced to leave a country in which no one ever would have been able to share the Gospel with them (because it was illegal, boo these laws) and now they're coming to Europe, Canada, and to a lesser extent the United States, where they have a realistic chance of hearing the Gospel in a place where this isn't illegal.

When I'm looking at these laws in Islamic countries that prohibit any attempt to persuade someone to leave Islam, I don't just tuck tail and say "If you say so." I say "You really shouldn't have those kinds of laws, there is a workaround for that and you're not going to enjoy it."

I know you're going to hate that part of my response, and I'll remind you again that when you said you were done conversing on this thread, that was the right decision. You should have stuck with that.

I should also like to mention that so far you have not shown any evidence of being indwelt with the Holy Spirit. It is not specifically that you're any worse than than anyone else similarly prejudiced in some way but that your prejudice time and again negates your claim. Perhaps all the time that you've spent on IB would be better spent on improving yourself to better be able to make such a claim.

Thanks, that is a well thought out response.

And there's just one more thing.

Again, it would be a good idea for you if it really was the last thing. Let's see if this is a good place to end it. You know what? That's pretty good. Nice quote. You can let that be the last word, if you're willing to just let it lie this time.

"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

(In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

@cooterhain

There is a lot of meaningless things in your post which I'm not going to bother responding because I have proved my point, even if you do not concede the point. And I have debunked your nonsense time and again.

First and foremost, since you're an extremist of the conservative type, different name, same game, and I have used snark to give you a big dose of your own medicine and reality checks.

Secondly, if you see reports in which you felt threatened or felt was disturbing, it is your job to report those posts, not mine; and I have in the past both warned and reported @Abz2000 whenever I've seen such posts. So, I mostly do not pay attention to Abz2000 posts but when I do see something, I do report him as I had once said on IB more than once. And I have also conserved with @kritikvernunftand I do not know if he's converted yet; he's not yet directly answered that question. So, you cannot say he's a Muslim until he himself says so; your conjecturing I think matters not to him and certainly not to me and certainly doesn't apply to him just because you have an opinion on him.

Thirdly, in addition to being everything else that I've surmised of your position, I am so tempted to call you out as a clear-cut liar on this one quote of yours:

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhain

When I started this thread, I was asking Muslims to give me an idea of what they would want to do in order to stop extremism within their own religion. I didn't get much from anyone, and I got even less from you. You clearly don't have an interest in assisting me with the original purpose of this thread, and when you said you were done with it and wouldn't post on it anymore, that was the right idea.

I direct you to post #49 in which I clearly answered your question 1 week ago. Like I've told you before in better couched words, stop being a tool. Also, I don't know what image you've had before of Muslim women in your head, but I'm a strong woman who doesn't back down from her convictions. I did want to leave responding to your thread because I could see I wasn't getting anywhere with you except in circles; that said, I reserve the right to change my mind, and I did when I saw you being a tool and a Islamophobic alarmist again in this thread.

"Mad"? No, on the contrary, I'm not mad, I'm just shaking my head at your hardheadedness. If you can dish it out, learn to take it as well. No, it's not that I just hate your response; it's that I absolutely abhor prejudice in all its forms. I pity you for your stubbornness because let me tell you something - you are the typical fundie Christian person whom no one takes seriously even in America because your prejudice is only exceeded by your cultivated ignorance and tribal worldview for which you are able to despise extremists like Daesh sympathizers from your lofty position perched as a self-righteous tool but are not able to see that they are simply the mirror of your mentality (even if you never go out and kill any human beings) just like Abz2000.

Yes, that is a well-thought out response, sir. You know why? Because you don't know the vibes you're giving off in most posts. In all the time I've been on IB, people usually participate on other threads; all the threads you've created have had negative undertones and most of your posts have the same negative tone. In fact, I have not once seen you share a joke or actually venture out into other threads that are about connecting with Muslims because let's face it: You're not interested in connecting with Muslims, but you are interested in berating Muslims and feeling superior as an Evangelical and putting down Islam. Let me tell you that as an atheist I found self-righteous Bible-thumping "Christians" quite insane and I put "Christians" in quote because they are not Christ-like. Therefore, stop fooling yourself with belief in having the Holy Ghost indwelt because actions speak louder than words and your words are problematic but your actions are representative and defining your character as more so (at least so far of what I've seen on IB).

Again, it would be a good idea for you if it really was the last thing. Let's see if this is a good place to end it. You know what? That's pretty good. Nice quote. You can let that be the last word, if you're willing to just let it lie this time.

I disagree. A good place to end it would be if you're actually willing to engage with Muslims rather than pushing your agenda and you and I and all of us can come out as brothers and sisters in humanity willing to embrace one another as people who share the same blood as descendants of Prophet Adam alayhis salaam (peace be upon him) and willing to work together for the shared vision of peace. However, let's face it: you're simply not interested.

And I quote again:

"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no such thing as "last word." Only God has the right to the first and last word to us as human beings. And "we listen and we obey."

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

...miners who are very forthcoming with the fact that they belong to some kind of pool and that there's a certain number of estimated TB that they currently need in order to be successful...

You can have a small or a large farm. If your farm is twice as large, it will roughly make twice as much money.
Your profitability depends on how much you are paying per KwH for electricity, under the assumption that you use efficient equipment.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

What I'm actually curious to know is approximately how much money one person needs to spend on equipment, facilities, and electricity in order to be in the game and make some consistent progress on a regular basis.

You could even start mining on your mobile phone.
You just won't make that much money, because it usually only has 4 general-purpose CPUs, which are also much more inefficient in mining than custom logic.
But then again, as I said, I only somehow know how it works on paper. Then, you've got the people who really do it in the real world. There is a massive difference, of course, when you really start doing it. The real world always throws up obstacles that you will not see just on paper.
Still, there is no minimum farm size.
Every KwH will yield a margin. So, you will need enough KwH to yield enough margins as to your taste/needs.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

...in order to replace equipment and/or upgrade it?...

The low-hanging fruit in improving equipment is gone now.
So, you will not easily find new designs that are for example twice as efficient than the existing ones.
So, nowadays upgrading is done much slower as before.
Just find a very cheap source of electricity, and your margins will be really good.
Everybody agrees that solar panels in a hot desert are the way to go.

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

Approximately how much do miners need to invest at this point in order to continue making money?

The miners who had to leave, are usually the ones who invested in inefficient equipment early on.
With efficient equipment, every miner who has access to cheap enough electricity, will make money, but possibly not as much as before, because other miners may have found cheaper sources of electricity than their own.

Don't mine in at typical retail rates for electricity. That is way too expensive.

However, there are countries, where the electricity rate at night is only half of the day time rate. It could be insanely cheap to mine with that kind of electricity at night. The bitcoin network is 24/7. So, even though your part of the globe may be asleep at night, on the other side of the globe, it is daytime, and they are doing transactions. So, they need the miners and their overruling hash rate to confirm the transactions, enforce irreversibility, and protect the ledger (=blockchain) from tampering, forking, and other attempts at creating multiple versions of history.

This is the evolution of the estimated collective hashrate that protects the blockchain from theft and forgeries:




and which is currently standing at 1.7 million TH/second.

To give you an idea of the economics, this mining equipment firm offers 4.73 TH/second for around 600 dollars, yielding around 0.4 coins per month, i.e. around 235 dollars/month in margin at the current BTC/USD exchange rate. You will still need to pay your electricity bill from these 235 dollars. So, your source of electricity must be cheaper than 235 dollars on a monthly basis for you to make a profit. Your best bet is a set of solar panels put up in an area that receives a lot of sunlight, because that would spare you from paying an electricity bill; but then you would still have to hunt for cheap solar panels.

format_quote Originally Posted by AHMED PATEL

ok we have quilliam foundation

there is also rashad ali whom i know..http://www.strategicdialogue.org/about/staff/

sara khan..inspire

and myself..

to answer the question..3..we do our best ,but need to do more..i consider myself mainstream..dont like the term moderate

Hi there! Thanks for responding, I thought this thread was dead and buried but I'm glad you found it. Thanks for including those links in your sig, it's very helpful.

I'm especially glad for your input because it would seem- from my limited Internet experience on this particular Internet forum- that mainstream Muslims in the UK (if the near-totality of this forums' membership is any indication) are not especially fond of the organizations or people that you're mentioning here. Most of these people don't seem to like talking about it, and they wish these people would just go away and stop what they're doing. It's been rather difficult for me to talk to anyone about this in a particularly useful way.

Now, this is where I'm coming from with this. The people and organizations you've named, you included, are trying to do something that's important and difficult. The general goal is admirable. (This is about as far as I usually get before people stop me and say I'm wrong about everything). But with that as a starting point, it would also seem that there are some things that could be improved, some things that could be done better, and some other things that are being done reasonably well and they should be carried over into future endeavors. I have been following Quilliam in some detail, Inspire in a bit less detail....the names you mention are vaguely familiar but I need to do a lot of following up on them....but from what I've seen and from what I can tell, it seems like everyone who's working on this knows they're not perfect, they're working hard on refining and improving what they do, and they're well aware of the fact that they need to be more effective, they're very open to hearing better ideas than what they currently have.

That is my impression, in general terms. I'd be interested in getting some of the more specific details, though. What are some things coming out of the anti-extremist efforts in the UK that are encouraging to you? What are some of the specifically bad ideas that need improvement? And how do you feel about the connection and engagement that's being achieved with mainstream Islam in the UK?

My general impression at this time is that mainstream Islam does not like or trust any of these counter-extremist groups or individuals, I often hear things about how they're government stooges doing the bidding of a government that's not pro-Islam, I hear that Islamism isn't an actual thing. I hear people skipping right over the idea that these people have good intentions and are trying to do something that benefits everyone, and instead they just have a laser focus on how they're harming a community and causing distrust. But of course I'm working with a tiny sample size and non-representative experience, and if there's anything else to see I'd like to know about it.

What's your general impression been? And does that match with your experience on this particular forum?