WATCH THE VIDEO! [heck, i was SHOCKED when i saw it. still am]
then respond. you want to blame murder on some strangers [MUSLIM Strangers] can't you can't be arsed to spend a few moments reviewing the situation?
is that fair?
'Society must help' tackle terror
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WATCH THE VIDEO! [heck, i was SHOCKED when i saw it. still am]
then respond. you want to blame murder on some strangers [MUSLIM Strangers] can't you can't be arsed to spend a few moments reviewing the situation?
is that fair?
Muezzin
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They have a point, but ultimately, I don't think the Government has a competent enough 'end-game'. If we assume that the Government is indeed intentionally eroding civil liberties, to what end are they doing it? In the long run, what would they have to gain? It wouldn't help the economy, it would not go unnoticed politcally, it wouldn't make its proponents rich necessarily, and the UK wouldn't stand to gain much power on the world stage.
I'm not saying just obey everything unquestioningly. We should just make sure we ask the right questions.
Greetings and peace be with you Thinker;
There are a whole lot of issues here.
Every time some country has an issue with America, should the rest of the world support America because the USA are always a just and moral country, and their foreign polices are just?
I am trying to remember did America help when Hitler invaded France and Poland?
Does Bin Laden represent the elected government of Afghanistan?
Thousands of innocent Afghans who had nothing to do with 9 / 11 have died, their property and livelihood has been destroyed, how have America and Britain been just to these people?
If Bin Laden had been hiding in Texas, would the USA have bombed strategic targets in Texas and sent in the army causing death and destructing, regardless of whether they find him or not?
The victim’s families of 9 / 11 are in line for hundreds of thousands in compensation, how much compensation does a widow of an Afghan farmer get whose husband was killed by Americans or British troops?
I ask these kind of questions because I am searching for justice for the poor and oppressed, and I cannot find answers that seem fair.
In the spirit of praying for the poor and oppressed
Eric
There are a whole lot of issues here.
Every time some country has an issue with America, should the rest of the world support America because the USA are always a just and moral country, and their foreign polices are just?
I am trying to remember did America help when Hitler invaded France and Poland?
Does Bin Laden represent the elected government of Afghanistan?
Thousands of innocent Afghans who had nothing to do with 9 / 11 have died, their property and livelihood has been destroyed, how have America and Britain been just to these people?
If Bin Laden had been hiding in Texas, would the USA have bombed strategic targets in Texas and sent in the army causing death and destructing, regardless of whether they find him or not?
The victim’s families of 9 / 11 are in line for hundreds of thousands in compensation, how much compensation does a widow of an Afghan farmer get whose husband was killed by Americans or British troops?
I ask these kind of questions because I am searching for justice for the poor and oppressed, and I cannot find answers that seem fair.
In the spirit of praying for the poor and oppressed
Eric
Uthman
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Comment by Justin Gest:
A bad trade-off
Sacrificing the sense Muslims have of themselves as Britons for supposedly greater security will not help prevent extremism.
The government's new Contest 2 strategy for preventing violent extremism will do a little to further secure citizens from a terrorist attack, and a lot to alienate the community of British Muslims.
Lacking a consensus about strategies for preventing violent extremism, the government is in the midst of a deadlocked, internal tug-of-war. One the one hand, there is the priority of securing citizens from future terrorist attacks. On the other hand, there is the priority to fulfil this objective without alienating millions of Muslims in the process.
The decided policy – as published yesterday (pdf) – does neither.
The new Contest strategy is sober, informed, and it admirably attempts to foster a sense of collective responsibility. However, it defines the collective according to crude criteria of "shared values" that rhetorically single out and symbolically indict a large subgroup within Britain – its two million Muslims. This is a mistake for three reasons.
First, one of the precursors to violent and ideological extremism among the Muslim community is a sense of marginalisation from British society and government.
My research examining young Muslims has demonstrated that those who find their Muslim identity irreconcilable with wider British society, those who do not perceive the capacity of British democracy to change, and those who do not believe British government is ultimately interested in their wellbeing are more likely to join an extremist group or withdraw from the public sphere.
A policy that effectively distinguishes Muslims from the British "collective" reinforces the sense that the government is uninterested in the welfare of Muslims – who appear entrenched as shadowy social pariahs. In my fieldwork, young Muslims tend to feel extraordinarily British and wish to be acknowledged as such. Mostly born here, they love football, hip-hop, and chicken and chips. They tend to come from close families, participate in community activities, and aspire to be more prosperous and educated than the previous generation. Like most Britons, this is generally a community of progress.
However, rhetoric of "shared values" is being used to challenge non-Muslim Britons to identify differences, rather than challenge people to find the wider commonality that we all need Muslims to see too.
Second, in the interest of preventing violent extremism, Muslims are actually the primary group that needs to feel a sense of collective responsibility.
Thanks to sensationalised popular discourse about Muslim extremism, Muslim perceptions about the ubiquity of religious discrimination, and fervent disapproval of British foreign policy, the British government is left with little, if any, credibility among its Muslim citizens.
While this new strategy will train 60,000 shopkeepers, it will likely inspire very few Muslims to engage the communities with which they are the most closely acquainted and challenge suspicious activity. Already, the government has encountered resistance from some Muslim youth workers and activists reluctant to cooperate in what they perceive to be a witch-hunt.
This will only make the government's job more difficult.
Third, the very basis of the Contest strategy exploits weaknesses in the British democracy – the very system that actually possesses the capacity to be inclusive by promoting self-expression and effective dissent using non-violent means.
It is only natural that the Home Office considers the worst-case scenario and overreacts to a low-probability threat. (The threat level has been listed at "severe" for months now.)
The problem emerges when in responding to the limited threat of terrorism, the government drafts policies that affect a selected community of people and place correspondingly selective restrictions on their personal liberty. Such steps cannot be justified by reality, and exploit a flaw in democratic governance.
Selective profiling, scrutiny and policy means that most of the citizenry will not be affected, so the usual checks on political injustice and overstretching of power are not catalysed.
In the extreme, this happened when the United States interned its Japanese-American population in concentration camps out of fear that they might collude with their imperial adversaries during the second world war. This remains a dark chapter in US history.
Not so subtly, with the coincidental publication of a frightening report about the likelihood of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapon terrorist attacks, the British government is utilising public fear of a stigmatised minority group to gain support for measures of which – if applied universally – the average person would strongly disapprove.
Democracies require their citizens to believe that majoritarianism sufficiently rationalises the disadvantage of the minority. The reasoning behind this relies on the minority's faith that they can one day become supported by the majority.
For many Muslims today, the prospect of a non-Muslim British majority one day standing up for their rights and interests is far-fetched. They need to be persuaded that the system works and that this can happen and has happened before.
I don't blame the government for searching for a political victory here. Before they call an election, Labour is in a fight for British minds, and progress in the struggle against terrorism makes for political success.
But progress against terrorism will only come if the government wins the fight for British Muslim minds too. I genuinely do not believe that it is too late. But this new policy suggests that our political leaders do.
Source
Justin Gest is co-director of the Migration Studies Unit and Ralph Miliband Scholar in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines socio-political alienation among Muslim minorities in western democracies.
A bad trade-off
Sacrificing the sense Muslims have of themselves as Britons for supposedly greater security will not help prevent extremism.
The government's new Contest 2 strategy for preventing violent extremism will do a little to further secure citizens from a terrorist attack, and a lot to alienate the community of British Muslims.
Lacking a consensus about strategies for preventing violent extremism, the government is in the midst of a deadlocked, internal tug-of-war. One the one hand, there is the priority of securing citizens from future terrorist attacks. On the other hand, there is the priority to fulfil this objective without alienating millions of Muslims in the process.
The decided policy – as published yesterday (pdf) – does neither.
The new Contest strategy is sober, informed, and it admirably attempts to foster a sense of collective responsibility. However, it defines the collective according to crude criteria of "shared values" that rhetorically single out and symbolically indict a large subgroup within Britain – its two million Muslims. This is a mistake for three reasons.
First, one of the precursors to violent and ideological extremism among the Muslim community is a sense of marginalisation from British society and government.
My research examining young Muslims has demonstrated that those who find their Muslim identity irreconcilable with wider British society, those who do not perceive the capacity of British democracy to change, and those who do not believe British government is ultimately interested in their wellbeing are more likely to join an extremist group or withdraw from the public sphere.
A policy that effectively distinguishes Muslims from the British "collective" reinforces the sense that the government is uninterested in the welfare of Muslims – who appear entrenched as shadowy social pariahs. In my fieldwork, young Muslims tend to feel extraordinarily British and wish to be acknowledged as such. Mostly born here, they love football, hip-hop, and chicken and chips. They tend to come from close families, participate in community activities, and aspire to be more prosperous and educated than the previous generation. Like most Britons, this is generally a community of progress.
However, rhetoric of "shared values" is being used to challenge non-Muslim Britons to identify differences, rather than challenge people to find the wider commonality that we all need Muslims to see too.
Second, in the interest of preventing violent extremism, Muslims are actually the primary group that needs to feel a sense of collective responsibility.
Thanks to sensationalised popular discourse about Muslim extremism, Muslim perceptions about the ubiquity of religious discrimination, and fervent disapproval of British foreign policy, the British government is left with little, if any, credibility among its Muslim citizens.
While this new strategy will train 60,000 shopkeepers, it will likely inspire very few Muslims to engage the communities with which they are the most closely acquainted and challenge suspicious activity. Already, the government has encountered resistance from some Muslim youth workers and activists reluctant to cooperate in what they perceive to be a witch-hunt.
This will only make the government's job more difficult.
Third, the very basis of the Contest strategy exploits weaknesses in the British democracy – the very system that actually possesses the capacity to be inclusive by promoting self-expression and effective dissent using non-violent means.
It is only natural that the Home Office considers the worst-case scenario and overreacts to a low-probability threat. (The threat level has been listed at "severe" for months now.)
The problem emerges when in responding to the limited threat of terrorism, the government drafts policies that affect a selected community of people and place correspondingly selective restrictions on their personal liberty. Such steps cannot be justified by reality, and exploit a flaw in democratic governance.
Selective profiling, scrutiny and policy means that most of the citizenry will not be affected, so the usual checks on political injustice and overstretching of power are not catalysed.
In the extreme, this happened when the United States interned its Japanese-American population in concentration camps out of fear that they might collude with their imperial adversaries during the second world war. This remains a dark chapter in US history.
Not so subtly, with the coincidental publication of a frightening report about the likelihood of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapon terrorist attacks, the British government is utilising public fear of a stigmatised minority group to gain support for measures of which – if applied universally – the average person would strongly disapprove.
Democracies require their citizens to believe that majoritarianism sufficiently rationalises the disadvantage of the minority. The reasoning behind this relies on the minority's faith that they can one day become supported by the majority.
For many Muslims today, the prospect of a non-Muslim British majority one day standing up for their rights and interests is far-fetched. They need to be persuaded that the system works and that this can happen and has happened before.
I don't blame the government for searching for a political victory here. Before they call an election, Labour is in a fight for British minds, and progress in the struggle against terrorism makes for political success.
But progress against terrorism will only come if the government wins the fight for British Muslim minds too. I genuinely do not believe that it is too late. But this new policy suggests that our political leaders do.
Source
Justin Gest is co-director of the Migration Studies Unit and Ralph Miliband Scholar in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines socio-political alienation among Muslim minorities in western democracies.
In my opinion eradicating terrorism from the brittish muslim community lays mostly in the interest of the brittish muslims, because if anything bad like London bombing happens again, it will be davastating for the image of the whole "asian" (muslim) society in UK and a awaited suprise for the xenophobes.
aadil77
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Not really, If ratting out prevent loss of lives, potential hellfire for the doer and more hatred against muslims, then I'm sure everyone here would do the same. You seem to have this view that there are members here who would support this kind of extremism, maybe on Ummah forums but not here
Uthman
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Comment by Gary Younge:
Where will we find the perfect Muslim for monocultural Britain?
Patriotic, pious, peaceful and patient. Labour's anti-terror strategy depends on mythical figures as elusive as WMD.
Somewhere out there is the Muslim that the British government seeks. Like all religious people he (the government is more likely to talk about Muslim women than to them) supports gay rights, racial equality, women's rights, tolerance and parliamentary democracy. He abhors the murder of innocent civilians without qualification - unless they are in Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq. He wants to be treated as a regular British citizen - but not by the police, immigration or airport security. He wants the best for his children and if that means unemployment, racism and bad schools, then so be it.
He raises his daughters to be assertive: they can wear whatever they want so long as it's not a headscarf. He believes in free speech and the right to cause offence but understands that he has neither the right to be offended nor to speak out. Whatever an extremist is, on any given day, he is not it.
He regards himself as British - first, foremost and for ever. But whenever a bomb goes off he will happily answer for Islam. Even as he defends Britain's right to bomb and invade he will explain that Islam is a peaceful religion. Always prepared to condemn other Muslims and supportive of the government, he has credibility in his community not because he represents its interests to the government, but because he represents the government's interests to Muslims. He uses that credibility to preach restraint and good behaviour. Whatever a moderate is, on any given day, he is it.
On his slender shoulders lies Britain's domestic anti-terror campaign. And as soon as the government finds him things are going to start turning around. Until then we are resigned to the fact that we will be about as successful at fighting terrorism at home as we are abroad and for the same reason. Unburdened by any desire to forge consensus or engage in negotiation, the government seeks to craft new realities out of whole cloth and then wonders why no one wants to wear them. And so it is that the mythical Muslim will prove as elusive as weapons of mass destruction or the beacons of democracy that Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to become.
Last week's launch of the government's new counter-terror strategy, Contest 2, was preceded by Hazel Blears' threat to deny funding to the Muslim Council of Britain because of comments its deputy secretary, Daud Abdullah, made about supporting Palestinians. It shows how these domestic tensions are intertwined with foreign policy.
If this changes anytime soon it won't be because of anyone we've elected at home. Britain has no independent foreign policy. Apparently when America wants to start wars, so do we; and when America wants to end them, we do too. We vacillate, at the pleasure of the White House, with great moral conviction. So long as its foreign policy is uncritically tied to Israel's then we should expect discontent from the Muslim community. That is not a reason to change our foreign policy - we should do that because it's wrong - but it is a reason to stop pathologising Islam as though the source of Muslim discontent is completely unfathomable.
"There is a grievance," explains Salma Yaqoob, a Respect councillor in Birmingham. "There's no reason to deny that. All you need to know that there is a grievance is a TV. These young men who want a short cut to heaven see innocent people being killed and then retaliate by going out and killing innocent people. There's a chilling logic to it. It's wrong. But it is logical."
But while the problem may start with foreign policy it does not end there. Lest we forget, there were riots involving Muslims in Britain's northern towns during the summer of 2001. Back then the issues were poverty (of Muslims and non-Muslims), organised racism and segregated housing.
Those problems have not gone away. Two-thirds of Bangladeshis in Britain and over half of Pakistanis live in poverty. The unemployment rate for Pakistanis is four times higher than for whites; for Bangladeshis it is more than five times. Among the youth it is worse - and in the areas where Muslims are concentrated, white people aren't doing that well either.
People generally don't make a living out of being Muslim and those who do should not be on the government payroll. The most obvious response to news that Blears was threatening to cut funding to the MCB was to say: "We shouldn't be funding the MCB anyway." Governments should not be in the God business. The fact that it funds the Church of England creates inequality. But the proper response is to stop giving the C of E money, not fund other religions.
Instead the government continues to approach Muslims as though their religion defines them. It rarely speaks to them as tenants, parents, students or workers; it does not dwell on problems that they share with everyone else; it does not convene high profile task forces to look at how to improve their daily lives. It summons them as Muslims, talks to them as Muslims and refers to them as Muslims - as though they could not possibly be understood as anything else.
"The confusion between the plural identities of Muslims and their Islamic identity is not only a descriptive mistake, it has serious implications for policies for peace in the precarious world in which we live," writes Amartya Sen in Identity and Violence. "The effect of this religion-centred political approach, and of the institutional policies it has generated ... has been to bolster and strengthen the voice of religious authorities while downgrading the importance of non-religious institutions and movements."
And when it does talk to them as Muslims, it demands they join a society that doesn't exist, on terms that would not be set for any other religious group. The Home Office pledge to challenge those who "reject parliamentary democracy, dismiss the rule of law and promote intolerance and discrimination on the basis of race, faith, ethnicity, gender or sexuality," is laudable. But, in a period that has seen the Catholic church stained with endemic child sex abuse and the Church of England rent asunder over homosexuality, the idea that Muslims should be singled out is laughable. Given the rise of the British National party in areas where Labour once dominated, you would think the ministers might launch such a challenge closer to home. And if these are "shared British values" then opposition to war and torture are no less so.
The trouble with those who rail against multiculturalism is that they invariably struggle to articulate the kind of monoculture they would like to replace it with, let alone how they would enforce it. And when they do, things rapidly start to fall apart.
I have yet to see a culture where truly shared values were proclaimed by fiat from above rather than forged by struggle and through consensus from below, let alone one where the primary responsibilty for tolerance rests with the most impoverished minority group that faces the most intolerance. But I dare say that it is in that place that we will find the mythological Muslim - patriotic, pious, peaceful and patient - waiting for reality to come to him and tell him it is ready.
[email protected]
Source
Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US.
Where will we find the perfect Muslim for monocultural Britain?
Patriotic, pious, peaceful and patient. Labour's anti-terror strategy depends on mythical figures as elusive as WMD.
Somewhere out there is the Muslim that the British government seeks. Like all religious people he (the government is more likely to talk about Muslim women than to them) supports gay rights, racial equality, women's rights, tolerance and parliamentary democracy. He abhors the murder of innocent civilians without qualification - unless they are in Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq. He wants to be treated as a regular British citizen - but not by the police, immigration or airport security. He wants the best for his children and if that means unemployment, racism and bad schools, then so be it.
He raises his daughters to be assertive: they can wear whatever they want so long as it's not a headscarf. He believes in free speech and the right to cause offence but understands that he has neither the right to be offended nor to speak out. Whatever an extremist is, on any given day, he is not it.
He regards himself as British - first, foremost and for ever. But whenever a bomb goes off he will happily answer for Islam. Even as he defends Britain's right to bomb and invade he will explain that Islam is a peaceful religion. Always prepared to condemn other Muslims and supportive of the government, he has credibility in his community not because he represents its interests to the government, but because he represents the government's interests to Muslims. He uses that credibility to preach restraint and good behaviour. Whatever a moderate is, on any given day, he is it.
On his slender shoulders lies Britain's domestic anti-terror campaign. And as soon as the government finds him things are going to start turning around. Until then we are resigned to the fact that we will be about as successful at fighting terrorism at home as we are abroad and for the same reason. Unburdened by any desire to forge consensus or engage in negotiation, the government seeks to craft new realities out of whole cloth and then wonders why no one wants to wear them. And so it is that the mythical Muslim will prove as elusive as weapons of mass destruction or the beacons of democracy that Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to become.
Last week's launch of the government's new counter-terror strategy, Contest 2, was preceded by Hazel Blears' threat to deny funding to the Muslim Council of Britain because of comments its deputy secretary, Daud Abdullah, made about supporting Palestinians. It shows how these domestic tensions are intertwined with foreign policy.
If this changes anytime soon it won't be because of anyone we've elected at home. Britain has no independent foreign policy. Apparently when America wants to start wars, so do we; and when America wants to end them, we do too. We vacillate, at the pleasure of the White House, with great moral conviction. So long as its foreign policy is uncritically tied to Israel's then we should expect discontent from the Muslim community. That is not a reason to change our foreign policy - we should do that because it's wrong - but it is a reason to stop pathologising Islam as though the source of Muslim discontent is completely unfathomable.
"There is a grievance," explains Salma Yaqoob, a Respect councillor in Birmingham. "There's no reason to deny that. All you need to know that there is a grievance is a TV. These young men who want a short cut to heaven see innocent people being killed and then retaliate by going out and killing innocent people. There's a chilling logic to it. It's wrong. But it is logical."
But while the problem may start with foreign policy it does not end there. Lest we forget, there were riots involving Muslims in Britain's northern towns during the summer of 2001. Back then the issues were poverty (of Muslims and non-Muslims), organised racism and segregated housing.
Those problems have not gone away. Two-thirds of Bangladeshis in Britain and over half of Pakistanis live in poverty. The unemployment rate for Pakistanis is four times higher than for whites; for Bangladeshis it is more than five times. Among the youth it is worse - and in the areas where Muslims are concentrated, white people aren't doing that well either.
People generally don't make a living out of being Muslim and those who do should not be on the government payroll. The most obvious response to news that Blears was threatening to cut funding to the MCB was to say: "We shouldn't be funding the MCB anyway." Governments should not be in the God business. The fact that it funds the Church of England creates inequality. But the proper response is to stop giving the C of E money, not fund other religions.
Instead the government continues to approach Muslims as though their religion defines them. It rarely speaks to them as tenants, parents, students or workers; it does not dwell on problems that they share with everyone else; it does not convene high profile task forces to look at how to improve their daily lives. It summons them as Muslims, talks to them as Muslims and refers to them as Muslims - as though they could not possibly be understood as anything else.
"The confusion between the plural identities of Muslims and their Islamic identity is not only a descriptive mistake, it has serious implications for policies for peace in the precarious world in which we live," writes Amartya Sen in Identity and Violence. "The effect of this religion-centred political approach, and of the institutional policies it has generated ... has been to bolster and strengthen the voice of religious authorities while downgrading the importance of non-religious institutions and movements."
And when it does talk to them as Muslims, it demands they join a society that doesn't exist, on terms that would not be set for any other religious group. The Home Office pledge to challenge those who "reject parliamentary democracy, dismiss the rule of law and promote intolerance and discrimination on the basis of race, faith, ethnicity, gender or sexuality," is laudable. But, in a period that has seen the Catholic church stained with endemic child sex abuse and the Church of England rent asunder over homosexuality, the idea that Muslims should be singled out is laughable. Given the rise of the British National party in areas where Labour once dominated, you would think the ministers might launch such a challenge closer to home. And if these are "shared British values" then opposition to war and torture are no less so.
The trouble with those who rail against multiculturalism is that they invariably struggle to articulate the kind of monoculture they would like to replace it with, let alone how they would enforce it. And when they do, things rapidly start to fall apart.
I have yet to see a culture where truly shared values were proclaimed by fiat from above rather than forged by struggle and through consensus from below, let alone one where the primary responsibilty for tolerance rests with the most impoverished minority group that faces the most intolerance. But I dare say that it is in that place that we will find the mythological Muslim - patriotic, pious, peaceful and patient - waiting for reality to come to him and tell him it is ready.
[email protected]
Source
Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US.