Syria, Gaza and the Criminalisation of Islam

Salaam

Another update

David Cameron’s anti-extremism proposals will backfire

(London, UK) David Cameron’s counter-terrorism agenda will create more distrust and alienation among British Muslims and an atmosphere in which political dissent is criminalised. He seeks to tear down a framework of laws built over centuries.

In his speech, Cameron referred to CAGE as an organisation that supports Jihadi John and ISIS in the Middle East. This is simply false. CAGE does not support terrorism or the use of political violence in any form. CAGE does not and has never supported the criminal actions of “Jihadi John”. CAGE has been consistent in its calls for a respect for the rule of law and due process, and has always advocated the need for dialogue and a rational approach to ending the War on Terror[1].

Cameron’s assertions that CAGE is an extremist organisation are false. The deliberate conflation of lawful political dissent with the chaos created in Iraq and Syria is the primary driver of alienation.

CAGE is seeking legal advice regarding possible defamation action given the deliberate attempt to malign a small NGO.

CAGE spokesperson Cerie Bullivant said:

“To outlaw genuine religious expression and political beliefs because they are perceived to be anti-democratic or at odds with the mainstream would put an end to centuries of development in civil liberties. All new ideas and thought start from a point of being seen as being against mainstream values.”

“Not only will it criminalise many more Muslims and thus alienate them from British society but it will also change the nature of the relationship between British civil society for future generations for all citizens. This is a fundamental assault on basic rights and freedoms.”

CAGE Research Director Asim Qureshi said:

“The worst thing about these proposals are that they will also target the ideas and expression of even school age children and turn our schools, universities and workplaces into surveillance centres. The so-called full spectrum attack will only create fear for those communities under intense scrutiny already, and may be the tipping point for many to leave the country despite our call that all right thinking people should join us in opposing these proposals.”

http://www.cageuk.org/press-release/david-cameron%E2%80%99s-anti-extremism-proposals-will-backfire

Salaam

Another update

Repeated rhetoric from Cameron’s failed ‘extremism’ policy

David Cameron has made yet another widely previewed speech about combating ‘extremism’ following a pledge for a full-blown UK offensive against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, saying he wants to “destroy the Caliphate in both countries”.

His latest proposals include pushing Muslims to speak out against Islamic ideas such as the Caliphate (not simply speaking out against ISIS); measures to ‘rein in extremists’; targeting those who criticize or question policies and actions of the state labeling them ‘conspiracy theorists’; clamping down on schools to avoid more episodes like the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair; an aggressive promotion of ‘British values’ and a ‘creed’ of shared ideas (including freedom of speech); and a legal definition of extremism including opposition to the rule of law and religious tolerance.

Like his predecessors, Cameron conflates legitimate religious and political views that Muslims hold with the chaos that has been created in Iraq and Syria. His recipe for dealing with ‘extremism’ is a dog’s breakfast – gesture politics, policies that will cause more damage within communities and add to the confusion and chaos across the world, plus a spectacular ideological own goal.

It is gesture politics because he comes across as a showman as opposed to a politician who is genuinely concerned about real issues. So he is showboating by talking about preventing another ‘Trojan Horse’ in schools (though Graham Stuart, Conservative chair of the education select committee in the last Parliament, had said that apart from one solitary incident, no evidence of extremism or radicalisation was found by any of the inquiries into any of the schools involved).

It is gesture politics when he talks about bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We hold no brief for ISIS – who are a militia, lack Islamic legitimacy for any Caliphate or Islamic state and for many of their actions. However, Cameron’s back-of-an-envelope proposal for carpet bombing regions of Iraq and Syria are as credible as ISIS’s Caliphate and Blair’s war in Iraq, and will do little to solve the region’s problems. While almost all Muslims globally do not recognise ISIS as a Caliphate, Cameron and other Western governments are happy to describe it as such and to justify their onslaught against people in the region while openly defending tyrants that kill people in Egypt and the wider region.

It is a recipe for more destruction across the world because military intervention by western governments – whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya – has destabilised entire regions, blighting millions of lives. Cameron says he wishes to destroy ‘the Caliphate’ in both countries (which isn’t a Caliphate), ignoring Britain’s role in destroying the Ottoman Caliphate after World War One, which subsequently destabilised the entire Middle East for decades.

It is a recipe for more division and alienation in communities within the UK because it clamps down on Muslims who express legitimate political views, or who hold normal Islamic views on the Caliphate and Jihad. The Prevent policy has silenced legitimate and credible views of Imams or scholars who are able to explain concepts like ‘Islamic state’ or events such as the murders in Tunisia or Woolwich in any kind of meaningful or credible way for fear of being labeled ‘extremists’.

It is a spectacular ideological own goal because of the contradictions in the policies – as well as the abandonment of any pretence that he actually believes in the values he professes to be upholding.

You cannot launch a PR campaign to promote “British values” whilst simultaneously using civil, legal and security agencies to forcibly convert people to your ‘creed’ because you have failed to convince them intellectually.

You cannot argue that you believe in free speech then clamp down on Muslims who say the Iraq war was a driver of grievance; or who have arguments about the legitimacy of the Zionist entity based on legal and historically valid positions; or by labeling those who expose how Prevent has led to spying on Muslims, or a McCarthyite atmosphere, as conspiracy theorists to be targeted; or targeting those who expose the fact that he and his predecessors in government support dictators and tyrants like Sisi and the Saudi regime (a matter that Eliza Manningham Buller mentioned as deeply troubling in her Reith Lectures some years ago); or by silencing criticism by dismissing any notion of a grievance in a manner that is frankly intellectually dishonest.

You cannot argue that you believe in the rule of law then silence those who expose British complicity in rendition and secret jails, troop abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and the unlawful actions of his own Home Secretary.

You cannot claim you believe in tolerance and then preside over one of the most intolerant periods in English history towards a minority community, stigmatizing the majority of Muslims if they do not tow a government line. Ironically, he demands Muslims denounce the very concept of a Caliphate that presided over harmony between different faith communities for centuries because of its Islamic approach to protecting peoples’ beliefs and worships – a lesson for him to learn from.

When Cameron clamps down or ridicules those who criticize and expose him, he only proves that he is not able to tackle their arguments.

His message to Muslims is ‘convert to our beliefs and political viewpoints’ or die a political and legal death. The most he can do is gag people, preventing them from saying what they think or punishing them for expressing their views.

Our message to the Muslim community is to ignore the man with the big mouth and little mind. When he has finished this round of rhetoric he will start again, and again. The more he bullies, the more he will fail.

The Muslim community has an important role to fulfil. When Cameron talks about the Caliphate, Muslims should look to the Islamic sources and understand what Islam really says about the Caliphate – and realise that both ISIS and Cameron are wrong!

The Muslim world needs a real Caliphate, not a bogus entity that kills people indiscriminately, is facilitating the breakup of Iraq, and has obstructed the campaign against Assad. The world needs a state to argue against the hegemony of global capitalism, that causes so much suffering.

The Muslim community in Britain needs more Islam, not less, to uphold their dignity in this world and the next in the face of the onslaught from politicians like Cameron, to carry a message of Islam in their words and deeds – expressing frank political views to challenge the state sponsored propaganda.

If the Muslim community follows this dignified Islamic path, little men like Cameron will just wither away, and crumble into political dust.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/current-affairs/repeated-rhetoric-from-camerons-failed-extremism-policy

Salaam

Another update


An Open Letter to Britain’s Leading Violent Extremist: David Cameron

Dear Prime Minister David Cameron,

It is with deep disappointment that I read excerpts of your speech provided by Downing Street to the press, purporting to set out a five-year strategy to tackle fundamentalist terrorism, which — whatever its intentions — is thoroughly misguided, and destined to plunge this country, as well as the Middle East, into further chaos and misery.

I am writing this open letter to request you, as a matter of urgency, to abide by your obligations as a human being, a British citizen, a Member of Parliament, and as our Prime Minister: to undertake proper due-diligence in the formulation of Britain’s foreign, counter-terrorism and security policies, based on the vast array of evidence from scientific and academic studies of foreign policy, terrorism and radicalisation, rather than the influence of far-right extremist ideology, and of narrow vested interest groups keen to profit from war and fear.


Ideology, innit


In your speech, you say:

“It begins by understanding the threat we face and why we face it. What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim….

And like so many ideologies that have existed before — whether fascist or communist — many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it.

We need to understand why it is proving so attractive… The root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself.”

But this is already incoherent. You state that the threat is Islamist extremism, an ideology. You then claim that we need to understand why that ideology is so attractive, and you answer the question by claiming that the “root cause” of this threat is the “extremist ideology itself.”

So essentially, the threat is the extremist ideology, and the root cause of the extremist ideology is the extremist ideology.

This is incoherent nonsense.

There are always factors outside ideology that push and pull people to that ideology. No one is suggesting ideology should not be tackled — but a strategy premised primarily on tackling ideology, which is what the government has been doing already for more than a decade, has already failed.


OSCT


Your own government and intelligence counter-terrorism experts have been trying to convince you and your Cabinets of this, for years. Why do you not listen to them?

Charles Farr, Director General of the Home Office’s Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT), last month repudiated your previous ill-conceived rhetoric implying that extremism is being “quietly condoned” in parts of local British Muslim communities.

He noted that only several hundred Britons have joined the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS), out of 2.7 million Muslims in Britain, and that rather than insinuating that a threat is hiding amorphously amongst British Muslims, we must recognise that in reality Muslim communities on the whole have proven quite resilient to extremism:

“It’s not to say the challenges they pose are not significant, they are. But … the more we overstate them the more, frankly, we risk labelling Muslim communities as somehow intrinsically extremist, which actually despite an unprecedented wealth of social media propaganda, they have proved not to be. So I think we need to be cautious with our metaphors and with our numbers.”

Farr had also repudiated your claim that the “root cause” is “extremist ideology”:

“The background of broken families, lack of integration into what we might call mainstream society, some level of criminality, sometimes family conflict, are all more than normally apparent… People join terrorist organisations in this country and in others because they get something out of them beyond merely satisfaction of an ideological commitment.

Sometimes it’s about resolution of personal problems, sometimes it’s about certainty in an environment which has deprived them of it, sometimes it’s about excitement and esteem, and we should not omit the last two factors.

This is the reality in Syria and Iraq but also many other contexts we’ve worked on over the past five or 10 years.”

In other word’s Theresa May’s top security official in your government is saying that ideology is not the main reason that people join terrorist organisations. While there is no doubt ideology plays a role in defining the nature of the terrorist group, its self-justification and actions, it is not the main driver of radicalisation.

Why do you not heed the words of your government’s own top counter-terrorism official?


Grievances


You go on to say:

“Some argue it’s because of historic injustices and recent wars, because of poverty and hardship. This argument, the grievance justification, must be challenged…

So when people say its because of the involvement in the Iraq War that people are attacking the West… we should remind them: 9/11 — the biggest loss of life of British citizens in a terrorist attack — happened before the Iraq War.”

The thing is, Prime Minister, is that what you call “the grievance justification” was endorsed by the British government and British intelligence services.

Just three weeks before the 7th July 2005 London bombings, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) — which examines intelligence from MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorism Branch, the Foreign Office, and so on, warned in no uncertain terms:

“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the UK.”

In 2006, one year after 7/7, a report prepared for the Ministry of Defence’s internal think-tank, the Defence Academy, concluded — contrary to your dishonest or wilfully ignorant announcements — that the Iraq War had acted as a “recruit sergeant” for al-Qaeda.

The MoD paper, authored by an official linked to MI6, found:

“The war in Iraq… has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world… Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.”


Saving Muslims


Nevertheless, you go on:

“When they say that these are wronged Muslims getting revenge on their Western wrongdoers…

…lets remind them: from Kosovo to Somalia, countries like Britain have stepped in to save Muslim people from massacres…”

Ah, Kosovo. It’s convenient that your understanding of the history of British foreign policy is so selective. You omit to mention that the destabilisation of the former Yugoslavia — which set in motion the ethnic conflicts across the Balkans of the 1990s — was planned and fostered by the US, Britain and German governments, setting in motion the events that led to the Srebrenica genocide.

And guess what! We used al-Qaeda fighters to finish the job.

You should really know this, given your job.

No, this is not a conspiracy theory. Although the US originally hoped for some decades to sustain Yugoslavia’s territorial unity and integrity, this changed as it became clear that the impact of escalating economic crises would likely result in the republic’s dismemberment.

As the late Prof. Sean Gervasi, an expert in Yugoslav affairs who was an economic advisor to John F. Kennedy in the White House, explained at a conference in Prague on NATO enlargement, the West:

“… carefully planned, prepared and assisted the secessions which broke Yugoslavia apart… And they did almost everything in their power to expand and prolong the civil wars which began in Croatia and then continued in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were involved behind the scenes at every stage of the crisis. Foreign intervention was designed to create precisely the conflicts which the Western powers decried. For they also conveniently served as an excuse for overt intervention once civil wars were under way… It is nonetheless true that Germany and the US were the principal agents in dismantling Yugoslavia and sowing chaos there.”

Gervasi quotes the Jane’s Information Group publication, Intelligence Digest, which, citing Western intelligence sources, observed in 1995: “The original US-German design for the former Yugoslavia [included] an independent Muslim-Croat dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina in alliance with an independent Croatia and alongside a greatly weakened Serbia.”

Whether by design or default, German pressure on the EU/EC to recognise Slovenia and Croatia “incontrovertibly hastened the disintegration of Yugoslavia” in a manner with distinctive “economic advantages” for Germany.

US-backed macro-economic restructuring also played a key role in exacerbating inter-ethnic tensions and fuelling nationalist sentiments. Internal economic mismanagement was already deeply problematic, but Yugoslavia’s economic woes were compounded by the US-backed pro-market doctrines.

Through the 1980s, IMF stabilisation programmes and debt restructurings had left Yugoslavia unable to service an expanded external debt exceeding $21 billion. In her seminal study published by Cambridge University Press, Reading Humanitarian Intervention (2003), Prof. Anne Orford of the University Melbourne Law School examines the literature arguing that IMF reforms contributed to the crisis. She concludes:

“The social impact of IMF economic liberalisation and shock therapy stabilisation programmes also had unacknowledged political effects. These programmes arguably fuelled the nationalist dynamic by rapidly restructuring republican and federal levels of government, by implementing policies with divisive social consequences, and by advocating the removal of mechanisms that provided some state support to individuals who would suffer under unrestrained economic liberalism.”

Several scholars have documented this process including historical sociologist Prof. Robin Blackburn of the University of Essex, Catherine Samary of Paris-Dauphine University, and the late Peter Gowan who was professor of international law at London Metropolitan University.

A declassified top secret CIA assessment dated 18th July 1990 noted that Yugoslavia was “making headway” on Western-backed market reforms, but warned that as a consequence:

“Unrest is likely to reach worrisome levels as reforms cause voters to lose their jobs or suffer sharp drops in purchasing power. This will prompt asking the West for more financial support.”

Despite a “bold stabilization campaign” scoring “significant successes,” the CIA report warned:

“These gains came at high cost, including falling industrial output, rising unemployment, and declining real incomes.”

According to a restricted internal memo from the private intelligence firm, Stratfor, obtained by Wikileaks, senior Eurasian analyst Marko Papic told Stratfor analysts to: “Watch for any labor/union/rioting due to the crisis.” This was because, Papic wrote: “Don’t forget, the IMF austerity measures imposed on Yugoslavia was [sic] in part to blame for the start of the war there. We need to be aware of any economically motivated social discontentment.”

As early as October 1990, the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) — circulated to senior White House officials —concluded that:

“Within a year a year the federal system will no longer exist; within two years Yugoslavia will have dissolved as a state.”

While arguing that this was due to “national pride, local economic aspirations, and historically antagonistic religious and cultural identifications” — especially “overheated nationalism fostered by Serbian extremists” — the report also admitted that: “economic reform offers little chance of staving off political dissolution” even if successful.

As expected, the NIE offered offered glowing praise for market reforms, but in an extraordinary analysis nevertheless acknowledged in some detail that the IMF stabilisation programme, combined with local mismanagement, was contributing to dramatic inflation. The report noted that “one third of economic activities would have no justification for existence under market conditions.”

Essentially, the report acknowledged that the preceding years of IMF reform had created an economic point-of-no-return. Noting that “Monetary authorities can squeeze inflation out through restrictive monetary policies,” the assessment found that Yugoslavia had tried that in 1989: “The result was deep recession. Infusions of money to ease the recession immediately reignited old inflationary pressures.”

The CIA assessment also reveals that by late 1990, US and European officials had firmly adopted a policy of attempting to manage a dissolution of Yugoslavia, which they hoped would be “peaceable,” though they knew this was unlikely:

“European powers will pay lipservice to the idea of Yugoslav integrity while quietly accepting the dissolution of the federation. West European governments share Washington’s hope that Yugoslavia’s transformation will be peaceable, but they will not provide much financial support. Austrian officials fear possible consequences from a breakup of Yugoslavia but say, nonetheless, that they favor democracy and self-determination above unity. Bonn, with its influence in the region greatly enhanced by unification, will continue to foster individual contacts between German state governments and the emerging Yugoslav successor states.”

Thus, in 1990, years before the outbreak of conflict, the US and Europe were already jockeying to position themselves in preparation for the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The CIA assessment also predicted that the most likely source of violence would come from Serb efforts to “reincorporate disputed territory into greater Serbia.” It assessed that Slovenia and Croatia as “independent democratic market-oriented states” would be most easily integrated into Western Europe, but that Serbia — due to “nationalism and statism” — would be inhibited from such integration due to its “failure to adopt similar political and economic reforms,” to agree to settlements, and its human rights record.

Nevertheless, as Balkans expert Tim Judah documented in his book, Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (2008), the US effectively gave the “green light not only for the conquest of Srebrenica but of Krajina too” with a view to facilitate the carve-up of Bosnia and corresponding “simplified” population exchanges. The Srebrenica massacre in July “could not be ignored,” found Judah, but “it could nonetheless be used…

“Immediately after the massacres took place, the Americans had satellite pictures showing the location of mass graves but these were released in the UN Security Council only on 9 August, at such a time as to distract attention from the exodus of Krajina’s entire population which was then taking place.”

The US was also arming Bosnian Muslims through an alliance with Islamists.

According to British intelligence historian Prof. Richard Aldrich, summarising intelligence files exhibited in the official Dutch government inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre, the Pentagon, with support from MI6, literally flew in al-Qaeda mujahideen into Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, in violation of the UN arms embargo. The so-called ‘black flights’ carrying arms and military trainers were undertaken largely by Turkish and Iranian planes, and later by unidentified black C-130 Hercules aircraft — all facilitated under Pentagon control of Yugoslav airspace.

The Dutch report, by intelligence expert Prof. Cees Wiebes, estimates the mujahideen presence in Bosnia to have been around several thousand, facilitated by the Pentagon operation. The intelligence files show that the US and Britain were aware that multiple Muslim regimes were dispatching mujahideen fighters to Bosnia.

According to investigative journalist JM Berger, also a Brookings Institute fellow, a declassified State Department cable shows that the black flights documented by Wiebes routinely carried Islamist mujahideen fighters into Bosnia. One plane from Iran (out of hundreds) was intercepted by the Croats. Apart from being “fully loaded with arms,” there were also “20 to 40 mujahideen fighters on the plane… these were probably not all (or even mostly) Iranians. Iranian nationals in Bosnia functioned more as trainers and intelligence agents, but Iran helped smuggle in fighters from around the Muslim world.” Berger also reported that: “American military veterans were also flying into Bosnia to serve as trainers to the Bosnian mujahideen during the same period.”

The Croats, according to Berger, contacted US embassy staff — obviously not privy to the top secret Pentagon operation — who, perplexed, told them to send the plane back.

Wiebes points out that the mujahideen were integrated into the Bosnian Armed Forces, receiving significant arms and logistical support, although they operated with considerable autonomy.

While the culpability of Serb forces in genocidal violence against Bosnian Muslims is well-documented, less known is the role of these foreign Islamist militants in carrying out massacres and atrocities.

A report from the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague notes tensions between local Muslims and the mujahideen entering Bosnia with Pentagon support. Far from ameliorating violence, the mujahideen committed decapitations and mutilations of both soldiers and civilians. Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, in their Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, acknowledge that, emboldened by these forces, Bosnian Muslims had “conquered and ethnically cleansed a vast area” — though they remained severely outmatched by the better armed Serb forces.

After Dayton, the Bosnian government issued thousands of passports, birth certificates and other documents to the mujahideen fighters, some of whom became implicated in terrorist activity.

A classified US State Department report leaked in 2001 showed that officials believed Bosnia had now become “a staging area and safe haven” for terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden.

Even one of your own senior Tory figures — Sir Alfred Sherman, top adviser to Margaret Thatcher and co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies — noted in 1997 that:

“The US encouraged and facilitated the dispatch of arms to the Moslems via Iran and Eastern Europe — a fact which was denied in Washington at the time in face of overwhelming evidence…

The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of the word. The US administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end. Indeed all the indications are that it intends to continue the war in the near future, as soon as its Moslem proteges are fully armed and trained.”

The NATO operations in the Balkans were about expanding US hegemony into Eastern Europe and rolling back Russian influence, according to Sir Sherman.

A year later, then US energy secretary Bill Richardson agreed with him in reference to US interests in Caspian oil and gas:

“This is about American’s energy security. It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share out values. We’re trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We’ve made a very substantial political investment in the Caspian and it’s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.”

In 1996, MI6 had according to American intelligence sources begun working with Islamist extremists Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Hamza and Haroon Rashid Aswat to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. Among the factions Britain and the US supported as part of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were al-Qaeda units linked to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy at the time.

Ironically, the 1999 NATO bombing campaign which you claim was perpetrated to support Muslims in fact accelerated the violence and precipitated the ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Albanians. The OSCE inquiry found that “the pattern of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24… The most visible change in the events was after NATO launched its first airstrikes.”

Then NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark admitted at the time that it was “entirely predictable” that Serb atrocities would intensify due to the bombing: “The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out.”

So why bomb? Not to save Albanians, according to Gen. Clark, who even pointed out that the NATO operation planned by:

“… the political leadership…was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.”

Saving Muslims in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing was “not the idea” according to NATO’s commanding General at the time — but you know better?


Revenge


None of this justifies “wronged Muslims” taking “revenge” against the West.

The terrorists who killed and maimed on 7/7 and 9/11 and so on, are not “wronged Muslims.” They are despicable criminals. But the despicable nature of their savagery does not erase the fact that Western wrongdoing plays a role in fuelling the grievances that permit extremist ideology to fester.

The funny thing is, Prime Minister, that it’s not mad conspiracy theorists that disagree with you on this: it’s British government counter-terrorism experts.

According to a joint Home Office and Foreign Office study based on survey evidence, information from British intelligence services, and academic research, foreign policy grievances are critical.

The report concluded:

“It seems that a particularly strong cause of disillusionment amongst Muslims including young Muslims is a perceived ‘double standard’ in the foreign policy of western governments (and often those of Muslim governments), in particular Britain and the US…

Perceived Western bias in Israel’s favour over the Israel/Palestinian conflict is a key long term grievance of the international Muslim community which probably influences British Muslims.

This perception seems to have become more acute post 9/11. The perception is that passive ‘oppression’, as demonstrated in British foreign policy, eg non-action on Kashmir and Chechnya, has given way to `active oppression’ — the war on terror, and in Iraq and Afghanistan are all seen by a section of British Muslims as having been acts against Islam.

This disillusionment may contribute to a sense of helplessness with regard to the situation of Muslims in the world, with a lack of any tangible ‘pressure valves,’ in order to vent frustrations, anger or dissent.

Hence this may lead to a desire for a simple ‘Islamic’ solution to the perceived oppression/problems faced by the ‘Ummah’ — Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan.”

So British intelligence, along with senior civil servants and experts in the Home Office and Foreign Office, are all basically deluded?

But you and your Cabinet have somehow developed a special insight missed by counter-terrorism specialists in the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and MI6?


Murder


You say:

“…it’s groups like ISIL, Al Qaeda and Boko Haram that are the ones murdering Muslims.”

While entirely true, it is false to claim that these despicable groups are the only ones “murdering Muslims.”

The scale of death wrought by successive British and American governments in Iraq and Afghanistan alone — both before and after 9/11 — is truly colossal, by any standard.

Even taking on the lowest possible numbers — Prof Stephen Walt of Harvard University calculates very conservatively 288,000 Muslims killed by US forces, compared to 10,000 Americans killed — Western violence in the Muslim world far outweigh deaths of Westerners due to Islamist terrorism.

Prof. Walt, a founder of one of the core theories of International Relations, structural realism, has pointed out that:

“Our real problem isn’t a fictitious Muslim ‘narrative’ about America’s role in the region; it is mostly the actual things we have been doing in recent years.”

Over the last 30 years (thus including decades before 9/11), he wrote, the US and UK have “killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost” — a ratio that “is probably much higher” in reality.

How much higher? A number of scientific estimates suggest that the total number of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by US and British covert and overt interventions, since 1990, approximates 4 million.

Wherever the real figures are between these higher and lower estimates, the upshot is that what you call “the grievance justification” is not, in fact, about “justification” at all.

It is about motivation.

And there can be no doubt that British government and intelligence counter-terrorism experts for the last decade largely agree that Britain’s dismal foreign policy record in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia has stoked resentment and provoked anger, thus fuelling the grievances that terrorist groups use to attract disillusioned recruits.

Why are you ignoring them?

You condemn the narrative of a ‘war on Islam’ while ignoring how our foreign policy has contributed to that narrative.

If you want to change the narrative, Prime Minister, you need to acknowledge the facts of history, and change your policy.


Exclusion


You continue:

“Others might say: its because terrorists are driven to their actions by poverty.

But that ignores the fact that many of these terrorists have had the full advantages of prosperous families and a Western university education.”

The same Home Office and Foreign Office report had also highlighted economic disadvantage as a critical factor in radicalisation.

Not, however, in the simplistic straw-man sense that you knock down, but in the more important sense that the deprivation experienced by the majority of British Muslims contributes to the formation of a general sense of identity associated with social exclusion, even for those who are not themselves excluded:

“Muslims are more likely than other faith groups to have no qualifications (over two fifths have none) and to be unemployed and economically inactive, and are over-represented in deprived areas. However, this is largely associated with the disadvantage of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, whereas the experience of Indian and Arab Muslims is much less disadvantaged…

There is still low Muslim representation in mainstream institutions of influence, especially for women — eg in public appointments, volunteering and mainstream politics (although the Home Office Citizenship Survey 2001 suggests that low Muslim participation rates largely reflect non-faith factors such as education, economic empowerment, age and gender).”

When a wider community experiences deprivation and unemployment — and 70% of British Muslims of South Asian ethnicity are in poverty — all the social science literature confirms that this has a detrimental impact on general identity formation in those communities, and exacerbates a sense of exclusion.

No one is saying that this alone makes a terrorist. The reality, though, is that this sense of exclusion contributes to the grievances that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS exploit to recruit to their cause.


Integration


You also insinuate that Muslims in particular suffer disproportionately from a lack of integration within Britain, which contributes to their disloyalty to Britain, and even hostility to its citizens.

“For all our successes as multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, we have to confront a tragic truth that there are people born and raised in this country who dont really identify with Britain — and feel little or no attachment to other people here.

Indeed, there is a danger in some of our communities that you can go your whole life and have little to do with people from other faiths and backgrounds.

So when groups like ISIL seek to rally our young people to their poisonous cause, it can offer them a sense of belonging that they can lack here at home leaving them more susceptible to radicalisation and even violence against other British people to whom they feel no real allegiance.”

Your contempt for facts, Prime Minister, is astonishing.

For despite the social exclusion that British Muslims suffer from disproportionately, it is not British Muslims who are failing to integrate with people from other faiths and backgrounds — it’s people like you.

In February, a ComRes poll of British Muslims for the BBC found that 93% believe they should always obey British laws; 95% feel loyalty to the country; 84% would not leave Britain to live in a Muslim state; 85% feel no sympathy towards those fighting against Western interests; 85% did not agree that organisations publishing depictions of the Prophet Muhammed should be attacked.

The poll also revealed that the risk of radicalisation was very much bound up with grievances. It showed that 30% of British Muslims aged 18 to 34 had some sympathy with the motives of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. So despite overwhelming opposition to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, a firm belief in their lack of justification, and unswerving loyalty to Britain, just over a quarter of young British Muslims felt some affinity with what they thought to be the grievances that motivated the attacks.

The latest poll corroborates previous polls. In 2009, Gallup found that 77% of Muslims say they “identified with the UK,” compared with only 50% of the public at large.

That is despite 75% of British Muslims also identifying with their religion. Religious belief, then, is not a barrier for the 82% of Muslims who say they are loyal to the UK.

The barrier is coming from outside Muslim communities. The Gallup poll showed that only 36% of the general public would consider Muslims loyal to the country: in other words, a disturbing majority of the general British public — 67% of Britons — are suspicious of Muslims in general.

Prime Minister, it seems, you are among that majority. Are you not ashamed?

Poll after poll, study after study, consistently prove that British Muslims are more integrated into British society than their compatriots. Many of the latter, beguiled by the constant association of Muslims with terror thanks to poorly researched and ill-informed speeches such as yours, rarely come across people of other faiths, barely know any Muslims (or other members of other minority communities), and therefore find it easy to swallow stereotypical fear-mongering promoted by politicians.

The Gallup poll, also pointed out that another major factor in inhibiting Muslims from reaching their “full potential” in Britain was economic. The poll found found that only 7% of British Muslims were considered “thriving” compared with 56% of the general population, and only 38% said they had a job, compared with 62% of the general public.

It’s worth noting here that the joint Home Office/Foreign Office report cited above, which drew on British intelligence, showed that the perception of anti-Muslim hostility is another major factor in radicalisation:

“Perceived Islamophobia (particularly post-9/11) in society and the media may cause some British Muslims including young Muslims to feel isolated and alienated and in a few cases to reject democratic and multi-cultural values…

Lack of understanding of Islam — insensitive use of language and perceptions of Islam and an ill-informed assumption that Islam’s teachings are inherently extremist. Media coverage of extremist fringe groups increases this…

Muslims’ perception of bias in the way counter-terrorism powers are used to stop, detain and arrest people, both at ports and in-country.”

So, Prime Minister, you have successfully reinforced the overwhelming perception among British Muslims that they are a problem community requiring special measures, thus vindicating the bigotry of far-right neo-Nazi extremists, and feeding the victim mentality that extremists prey on to exploit and recruit.


Sell outs


Why is your government so intent on ignoring the consensus in the academic literature on terrorism and radicalisation, which has proven your ideological presumptions about both to be fanciful theories, promoted by ignorant American neoconservatives?

Indeed, I am appalled but sadly not surprised to hear that instead of listening to experts with years of direct experience in the field, you are still taking advice from the laughably inept group of misfits who operate under the nomenclature of “the Quilliam Foundation.”

On Sunday afternoon, Quilliam’s founding chairman Maajid Nawaz tweeted:

“PM Cameron ‪@Number10gov gives major policy-defining speech on extremism tomorrow. I helped with it. It’s significant.”

He added:

“…. his speech will acknowledge this has something, not everything, but something to do with Islam.”

What advice did you receive from Maajid Nawaz? And why is it that you and your government take the Quilliam Foundation so seriously?

I ask this because of your statements as follows:

“But you dont have to support violence to subscribe to certain intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish.

Ideas which are hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality.

Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation.

Ideas — like those of the despicable far right — which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others…

We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of worship, equal rights regardless of race, sex, sexuality or faith. We believe in respecting different faiths but also expecting those faiths to support the British way of life.”

Does your government not vet the people it calls into No. 10 Downing Street?

Are you not aware that Maajid Nawaz and the ‘experts’ employed by his ‘thick-tank’, Quilliam Foundation, completely lack even a shred of meaningful academic expertise (not a single contribution to the peer-reviewed academic literature at all) and are largely devoid of any meaningful, concrete experience of actual counter-radicalisation/counter-terrorism practice?

Are you not aware that Quilliam is merely a tool of far-right violent extremists in the US?

If not, why not? Surely the government vets the people it calls into Whitehall?

You claim that freedom of speech is a British value, but you take advice from a man who appointed to the board of Quilliam an American neoconservative bigot, Chad Sweet, a former US Homeland Security official under the Bush administration who now sits on the board of the FBI’s InfraGard, which facilitates spying on the public for corporate interests. The American Civil Liberties Union has criticised InfraGard for eroding freedom of speech and political dissent—both of which are integral to democracy, no?

During his tenure as an American director of Nawaz’s Quilliam Foundation, Chad Sweet was campaign manager for Senator Ted Cruz — the far-right neocon bigot who is openly homophobic, racist, and misogynist, as well as being a climate denier.

As a Quilliam director, Sweet happily promoted Cruz and his Republican brand of homophobia, racism and misogyny to his heart’s content, without a peep of protest from the ‘liberal’ Nawaz, who is clearly happy to harbour the very same bigotry he publicly opposes, on his very own Board of Directors.

Chad Sweet was and is part of a wider US network of white supremacists who see anti-Muslim hatred as their ticket to political victory.

Also on Quilliam’s US board is Courtney La Bau, who is Vice President of a bank not only linked to the repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, but which also has a joint partnership with Saudi Arabia’s largest private bank, al-Rahji, described by US intelligence as a “conduit for extremist finance” — al-Rahji’s founder is a member of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain’ of al-Qaeda financiers.

Over the last few years, Quilliam has received a million dollars in funding from a Republican front charity — Gen Next Inc. — which essentially operates to raise money for Republican political candidates, and for political causes and issues close to the hard-right of the Republic circuit: much of this involves promoting politicians who promote war — war and regime-change in the Muslim world.

The network’s members include senior members of the Bush administration who spearheaded the invasion of Iraq, which alone killed nearly a million people (according to last year’s study by the Nobel Prize-winning doctors group, Physicians for Social Responsibility).

These violent extremists pull the strings of the unqualified morons you are inviting into the heart of government, to advise you on your speeches and policies.

Given your professed concern with tackling “entryist” violent extremism, this is quite alarming.

The Home Office/Foreign Office report mentioned above even referred to how the government’s reliance on such crony organisations, with no grassroots credibility or expertise, is alienating and radicalising people:

“Some young Muslims are disillusioned with mainstream Muslim organisations that are perceived as pedestrian, ineffective and in many cases, as `sell-outs’ to HMG.

The government must make a more concerted effort to persuade the Muslim community that it is trusted and respected. That requires a change of language. Public challenges to Muslims to decide where their loyalties lie are counterproductive.”

It’s been over 10 years since that internal government study, and no lessons have been learned. To the contrary, you are repeating and reinforcing the incompetent, self-serving mistakes of your predecessors.


Your far-right promoters


Worse, Prime Minister, you are associating with people who stand for the very illiberal anti-British values you claim to oppose.

I am thinking, for instance, of one of your closest confidents and ad hoc advisors, Lord Daniel Finkelstein, who sits on the board of the Gatestone Institute, a notorious US think-tank that promotes far-right extremism and racism. This is the same think-tank that hosted Geert Wilders, who your Home Secretary previously banned for his racist incitement. Wilders not only promotes hatred of Muslims, he has openly called for ethnic Moroccans to be depopulated from the Netherlands.

Yet Finkelstein has promoted Wilders’ anti-Muslim bigotry and racist calls to depopulate Europe of its Muslims by, along with his other Gatestone board members, approving the publication of screeds sanitising and defending his far-right extremist ideology.

Finkelstein, in the same capacity at Gatestone, promotes the very same blogger who was cited 111 times by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik in his manifesto, and who has stated:

“Islam and all those who practice it must be total and physically removed from the Western world.”

Lord Finkelstein disavows that he personally advocates or believes such things. But he insists that such ideas deserve to be heard and platformed, and himself actively ensures they are heard and platformed. And he appears to have your ear.

Why?

Why do you cavort with a man who gleefully promotes racism and xenophobia, a man who publishes through the Gatestone Institute absurd narratives of “Muslim no go zones,” which you yourself described as idiocy?

Prime Minister, please disclose in the public interest the nature of your conversations with faux-liberals like Finkelstein and Nawaz, and please explain why your opposition to far-right extremism does not extend to rooting out the promoters and sympathisers of violent far-right extremism whom you are harbouring in your own private advisory sessions.


Conspiracy


You go on to suggest that those who criticise your government’s flawed and misguided counter-terrorism policies are engaged in malevolent conspiracy theories:

“And ideas also based on conspiracy…

..that Jews exercise malevolent power…

…or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam.

In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached…

…that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan…

…that British security services knew about 7/7, but didnt do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash.”

Why is it that in 2007, when Tony Blair dismissed the need for an independent public inquiry into 7/7 as it would “undermine support” for the security services, you condemned his stance and demanded a full inquiry as only that would “get to the truth.”?

Let’s cut to the chase, Prime Minister — this not about “conspiracy theories.” It’s about your utter contempt for the 7/7 families and survivors, who after having suffered the worst terrorist attack in Britain since WW2, had to endure your government’s backtracking of your promise to hold an independent public inquiry.

It was the 7/7 families and survivors who were asking the hard questions that, before your rise to government, you disingenously supported to win votes.

Urgent questions like — why did MI5 lie by claiming it had not identified any of the 7/7 bombers prior to the attacks?

Why did the government lie by pretending that no warnings whatsoever of the attacks had been received by the intelligence services, when in fact, as we now know from leaks published in the press, dozens of warnings were received?

Why, despite urging an inquiry into the “preventability” of the attacks while hoping for votes, do you now effectively mock the 7/7 families and survivors, and the lawyers and experts who supported their call for an inquiry, as conspiracy theorists, complicit in extremism?

Prime Minister, this is disgusting behaviour, and it does not represent British values.


Scum


You say:

“The world is not conspiring against Islam; the security services arent behind terrorist attacks; our new Prevent duty for schools is not about criminalising or spying on Muslim children.”

As usual, your straw-men are irrelevant.

Your government played a key role in creating the murdering, rapist, tyrannical scum rampaging across Iraq-Syria under the banner of the ‘Islamic State.’

In your self-serving drive to destabilise the regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, and to rollback Iranian influence in the region on behalf of your allies in the Gulf, you and the US supported those despicable Gulf regimes in supplying arms and aid to al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Salafi-jihadist groups: groups that you now conveniently claim to oppose.

In 2012, the intelligence community was fully aware that the core of the rebel insurgency being supported by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey was overrun by al-Qaeda. We were warned that continuing this strategy would spawn a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, which would in turn trigger the eruption of an “Islamic State” entity across Iraq and Syria.

Yet you, in alliance with the Obama administration, accelerated the strategy. You accelerated it knowing full well that British and Western Muslims were being recruited by extremists to fight in Syria, knowing full well that many of them would return to the West and pose a threat to our national security — yet in your noble pursuit to topple Assad the dictator, you helped other dictators support the extremists that would become ISIS, and you turned a blind eye to the radicalisation of a minority of our young people here as a result.

Even now, while you pontificate obscenely from your pulpit about “extremism,” British military intelligence officials are on the ground in Turkey and Jordan, working with the Gulf states and Turkey to supply arms and aid, and to coordinate operations, for al-Qaeda forces in Syria — purportedly to counter ISIS.

But you’d rather we don’t ask questions about that, right Prime Minister?

You’d rather we scrutinise the views of Muslim children — even when your own Parliament’s inquiry into the ‘Trojan Horse’ school allegations concluded that your Education Minister, Michael Gove, had severely overreached:

“One incident apart, no evidence of extremism or radicalisation was found by any of the inquiries in any of the schools involved. Neither was there any evidence of a sustained plot, nor of significant problems in other parts of the country.”

You have claimed on NBC news to be committed to working with the US “to destroy the caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, but you are working with some of the most extremist, corrupt and violent regimes in the region — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, Israel — supposedly to promote democracy and human rights.

These are the very same regimes which, by the admission of your American colleague, Vice President Joe Biden, funded al-Qaeda in Iraq (which became ISIS) and its rival al-Qaeda in Syria (many of whose members went on to join ISIS).

Now you are working with them to “destroy the caliphate,” despite failing to investigate and shut-down the same funding networks to these violent extremists that your government helped establish.

Your war, Prime Minister, is a farce.

You, more than any other British citizen, are complicit in the rise of ISIS, and the radicalisation of a minority of Britons. You have helped create the militant groups which, you rightly acknowledge, are murdering not just Westerners, but Muslims in Iraq, Syria and beyond.

The only people that will benefit from all this are giant defence contractors, many of which are closely connected to your party, and which hold overbearing counter-democratic influence on your foreign policy.

“Whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Sikh, whether you were born here or born abroad, we can all feel part of this country — and we must all now come together and stand up for our values with confidence and pride.”

I don’t need you to tell me stand up for our values, or to feel part of my country, thank you very much.

I’m British-born and bred, and unlike you, I’ve been standing against violent extremists of all stripes, Muslim and Western, for much of my working life.

I’m standing up for British values right now, and taking this opportunity to demand that you stand up for British values by denouncing the violent extremism that you have been perpetrating, harbouring, and allying with through your own government.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/an-open-letter-to-britain-s-leading-violent-extremist-david-cameron-abb568861784

Salaam

Another update

Responding to David Cameron’s ‘clash of civilisations’ speech

Following David Cameron's speech this week on his proposed counter-extremism measures, Asim Qureshi writes this piece, critical of the Prime Minister's approach and the language used as divisive and evoke a combative state between communities instead of bridging the divide between communities and the state. Cameron, again fails to address the causes and grievances and instead focuses on conspiracy theories advocated by a minority of people.

Part of David Cameron’s endorsement of the PREVENT strategy and CHANNEL deradicalisation programmes in the UK, is the notion that the government wishes to end the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality that plagues ‘extremists’ in the UK. However, his speech outlining new counter-extremism measures fortifies the very clash that he claims he is seeking to avoid. This is underlined in the language he uses:

“What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology.

It is an extreme doctrine.

And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive.

At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm.

And it often backs violence to achieve this aim...

…mostly violence against fellow Muslims - who don’t subscribe to its sick worldview.”

There are a number of things wrong with these utterances.

To begin with, Cameron refers to the contest between ideas as a fight, reminiscent of George Bush’s War on Terror “crusade” in 2001. How is this fight to take place? What are the jurisdictional boundaries of the fight, and what are the rules of engagement?

To say that the language is poorly framed would be to undermine its significance. There is malicious intent in the words; they evoke a combative state towards communities, as opposed to redressing or bridging the divide between them and the state.

What are the hallmarks of this ideology that Cameron references? It is “extreme” and “subversive” and wants to “destroy” and is “barbaric” and “sick” and uses “violence”. These words tell us very little about what this ideology is, other than that it is evil and that we should hate it. The ultimate aim is to instill fear, as opposed to build cohesion.

Conspiracies are not the issue

It is absurd that the Prime Minister pays so much homage to the conspiracy theory elements of what some (Muslims and non-Muslims) believe, rather than engaging with the actual grievances Muslims have.

Just to be clear on what the majority of Muslims believe in relation to the prevailing conspiracy theories:

• Muslims don’t believe that Jews have malevolent power. They do however believe that Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people are disproportionally whitewashed and given impunity by Western powers.
• Muslims don’t believe there is a concerted effort by governments to humiliate Islam. They are concerned that so much of what governments do, gives that impression – we would just rather it all stopped so we could stop thinking there might just be something there.
• Those involved in ‘truth’ movements around 9/11 and 7/7, are largely from non-Muslim backgrounds. You very rarely hear of people within Muslim communities speaking in these tones. Rather, there has been widespread condemnation of those actions, even though Muslims feel that they have no responsibility towards the criminal acts of individuals.

Revising history from 9/11 is a mistake

For David Cameron, the starting point of the War on Terror was 9/11, as if there was a complete vacuum when it came to the West’s relationship with the Muslim world before then. According to his revisionist version of history, nothing was wrong with the world, then 9/11 happened, and that heralded a new era.

But nothing could be further from the truth. There is a long history of political violence prior to 9/11 between the Muslim world and the West, with lengthy grievances attached to both. When detainees were sent to Bagram Airbase after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, each cell at Bagram had a flashpoint in the conflict between East and West attached to it, such as the 1988 Lockerbie bombing or the 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran. The American soldiers were not distinguishing between Sunni or Shia flashpoints, but rather othered Muslims as a whole.

There is also an assumption implicit in Cameron’s speech that 9/11 was an attack on all the West, rather than on the United States specifically.

This narrative, invariably leads David Cameron to adopt a ‘white saviour complex’ where he evokes Kosovo and Somalia as examples of where Britain has been magnanimously involved.

I was a very young man when the conflict in Kosovo began, and I knew many of the details of what was taking place due to reports coming from the region through refugees and others. NATO intervened when the massacres had already taken place. Only when slaughter beyond reckoning had occurred, did NATO feel the time had come to intervene. The saviour role that Cameron ascribes to Britain in this context is dubious and should be questioned.

Terrorism is not built on ideology

“But let's not delude ourselves. We could deal with all these issues - and some people in our country and elsewhere would still be drawn to Islamist extremism.”

For David Cameron the grievances that Muslims feel, can all be dealt with - except they have never been dealt with.

The last 14 years of the War on Terror have been based on the idea that somehow the existential threat of terrorism and political violence can be defeated by a securitized approach manifested in the government’s toxic PREVENT strategy. This approach has not only failed, but it has actually made us all less safe than ever.

The emergence of groups such as the Islamic State, condemned by Muslim scholars across the globe, are a phenomenon borne of decisions made by governments in 2002, not from ideology.

The best evidence of this is the fact that the very al-Qaeda scholars the West was so concerned about then, are now at the front lines of challenging the Islamic State on the very ideological basis into which Cameron groups them all.

The British Prime Minister’s speech is yet another example of poor thinking and short sightedness. Should the UK government remain on this combative course, things will not get any better.

http://www.cageuk.org/article/responding-david-cameron%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98clash-civilisations%E2%80%99-speech

Yes it is all very obvious. You have Jewish leaders in Europe and the rest of the West riding on moronic whites in their war to genocide their old enemies the Muslims.
They know they are talking drivel as they tighten up the screws, but the moronic whites buy it. The Jews have been infiltrating and grooming these cretins for centuries.

Salaam

Another update

LESSON IN HYPOCRISY: CAMERON’S SPEECH AT MY SON’S SCHOOL

In this piece written for the Middle East Eye, Outreach Director Moazzam Begg discusses the Prime Minister’s duplicitous approach to tackling extremism following his speech this week in Birmingham, at the very school Begg's son attends. This approach to extremism is one that Begg believes will not wash with ordinary Muslims.

When it comes to education it seems that Prime Minster David Cameron is supportive at least of some local institutions that I’ve been involved with. I was pleased to hear him mention that the local Jewish King David primary school that I attended as child was a fine example of integration. I completely agree – it’s a wonderful school, although I don’t know what Britain’s most senior Muslim police officer who sought to enforce Cameron’s anti-extremism measures by citing hostility to Christmas as a form of extremism, would make of it. We never celebrated Christmas at King David.

What I’m sure escaped the Prime Minister was that while he extolled the virtues of adhering to the “rule of law,” a core British value in the fight against extremism, he was speaking from a Birmingham school attended by a child directly impacted by successive British governments’ violation of the rule of law.

In his speech at my son’s school, Cameron again stated the importance of being part of a tolerant and inclusive Britain under a set of values that undermines extremism. The British values debate, of course, isn’t new. A 2006 BBC poll identified the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta as the best date to celebrate Britishness. 15th June this year marked the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. I took one of my children with me to see an exhibition about it displayed at the British Library last week. I’d contributed to one of the art installations. Only three clauses of the document are still relevant today, the most famous of which is number 39:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

The history was fascinating - the hypocrisy palpable.

My son was born while his father was being abducted, falsely imprisoned without charge and tortured in Bagram and Guantanamo in the presence of British MI5/6 agents. I never met him until my release, when he was three years old.

Whilst it is true that Cameron did order an inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture over five years ago, there has never been any government accountability and nothing has come of the inquiry. In fact, although once again tortures have escaped prosecution, the US has been much more forthcoming in admitting gross human rights violations committed by its spies.

Last year, again, my family was thrown out of our home by scores of anti-terrorism police officers scouring for evidence to imprison me – this time legally – for a long time. I was imprisoned and denied bail; the Home Secretary confiscated my passport and the Treasury froze my assets because I’d supported Syrian rebels with a generator and fitness exercises, long before the emergence of ISIS.

At the time Cameron’s government was openly supporting the same Syrian rebels with non-lethal aid. In 2013, evidence that the Asad regime had used chemical weapons prompted Cameron to seek – and embarrassingly lose - parliamentary consent for airstrikes against the regime. The duplicity of Cameron’s decision to bomb ISIS targets in Syria, revealed this week, without seeking parliamentary approval couldn’t be starker.

After awaiting trial for seven months as a high-risk inmate of a maximum-security prison I was released and declared innocent by police. But it was during this period, especially after prison visits, that my children, who’d been too young to understand concepts like freedom, democracy and the rule of law when I was in Guantanamo, finally saw what it meant to be a Muslim target of a state.

Over the years I have taught my children not to hate those who have harmed them or me, only to seek justice and accountability while holding true to their beliefs. Painful as it may be, I’ve invited US soldiers over to my house to meet the children they prevented me from seeing just so they can understand who we really are.

Belief in the Caliphate, jihad and shariah do not make people extreme. Cameron should know this better than most; he launched shariah-banking bonds a couple of years ago when he stated Britain was “one of the greatest centres for Islamic finance anywhere in the world”.

Cameron would do well to remember that Gandhi supported the caliphate movement every time he passes by his statue at parliament. The historic and very British Charge of the Light Brigade was done in support of the Ottoman Caliphate and to protect British trade routes to India. My grandfather and his father fought in both world wars as part of the British Indian army. Rightly or wrongly they did so believing they were doing jihad. Britain has since supported jihad against the Soviets, Gaddafi and even Assad.

Cameron chided the National Union of Students (NUS) for supporting CAGE, which he claims, apologises for terrorism. This kind of tabloid assessment of an organisation best placed to identify and unpick causes of alienation among Muslims typifies the PM’s inability to engage the community. His failure to allow us to act in the matter of Alan Henning is a sad matter of record.

It is agreed that ISIS has hijacked Islam and poses an existential threat to the Muslim world. But, just as Cameron said that (Muslims) condemning ISIS is not enough, he can’t redefine what Islam is, no matter how many lackeys he conjures up. His disconnection to mainstream Muslim views was evident when he dismissed the moderate Ramadan Foundation’s criticism as self-appointed and extremist.

The fight against extremism cannot be won while Cameron’s government continues to act hypocritically. But based on what we’ve seen so far, hypocrisy is as British as the Magna Carta.

http://www.cageuk.org/article/lesson-hypocrisy-cameron%E2%80%99s-speech-my-son%E2%80%99s-school

Salaam

Another comment piece

Our latest weapon in the war on terror? Organic free-range tripe

Is David Cameron the man who will destroy freedom in order to save it? His strange, wild speech on Monday suggests that he is. Mr Cameron, as careful observers already know, has a surprisingly poor grasp of history and politics and does not seem to be very clever.

The reception given to his outburst was mostly friendly, all across what is supposed to the spectrum of media opinion – though increasingly it is not a spectrum but a monolithic bloc.

Did they read it? I did. It is full of seething organic free-range tripe.

He actually tries to pretend that Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War has had nothing to do with the development of resentful Islamist militancy here. He does this by saying that the September 11 attack on Manhattan took place before the Iraq War.

Indeed it did. It was motivated – as one of the hijackers, Abdulaziz al-Omari, made clear in his own recorded testament – by Arab fury over America’s support for Israel, and the continued presence of US troops on Saudi soil. And it succeeded in changing US policy on both.

Terror is rational. Terrorists know that it works, or why has the USA started supporting the two-state solution in Israel which it long opposed, and why is Martin McGuinness invited to Windsor Castle these days?

If Mr Cameron doesn’t like terrorism, then he wouldn’t have met Mr McGuinness and the even ghastlier IRA mouthpiece, Gerry Adams, at Downing Street last week. But he did. How can that be if, as the Prime Minister says, ‘British resolve saw off the IRA’s assaults on our way of life’. Oddly, you only saw the pictures of this pair meeting Jeremy Corbyn on the same day. The Downing Street meeting was not, it seems, filmed.

But that’s only a part of the problem. Mr Cameron claimed that we have, in this country, a ‘very clear creed’. But do we?

He says: ‘We are all British. We respect democracy and the rule of law. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, equal rights regardless of race, sex, sexuality or faith.’

Little of this is true. Few regard themselves as British any more. Votes are bought by billionaire donations and incredibly expensive marketing. Democracy is surely not respected by the growing legions who don’t vote. And, as Mr Cameron acknowledged, there are now areas of this country where votes are rigged and voters intimidated for the first time since the days of Dickens.

Freedom of speech, for those who don’t accept multiculturalism or the sexual revolution, is increasingly limited, mainly by threats to the jobs of those who speak out of turn.

Mr Cameron is also plain wrong when he says our freedom stems from democracy. Democracy these days involves agreeing with whatever slogans the Murdoch press is shouting.

Our freedom comes from the 1689 Bill of Rights, which he doesn’t seem to know exists, from Magna Carta, which he can’t translate, from Habeas Corpus, which has been whittled away on the excuse of counter-terrorism, and from jury trial, which is fast disappearing. Freedom of speech certainly can’t be defended by banning ‘hate-preachers’, which Mr Cameron is so proud of doing. Freedom of speech is freedom above all for those whose views you dislike most.

Nor can it be strengthened by demanding that people publicly declare that they don’t hold certain opinions. Mr Cameron actually said: ‘We must demand that people also condemn the wild conspiracy theories, the anti-Semitism, and the sectarianism too. Being tough on this is entirely in keeping with our values’.

How on earth is he going to make this happen? Electric shocks until they get their minds right? Personally, I’d much rather know that such people held these frightful views, than have them forced to pretend they didn’t.

Then there is: ‘We need to put out of action the key extremist influencers who are careful to operate just inside the law, but who clearly detest British society and everything we stand for.’

Put out of action? If they are inside the law, which protects the freedom Mr Cameron so values, what does this foggy phrase mean? Sandbagging them as they come out of the mosque?

I’m also not very reassured that we have a Premier who thinks he can advise TV companies on who they should and should not invite on to the airwaves. I think we can all see where that leads.

Mr Cameron and Mr Blair, and their predecessors over decades, have gone a long way towards Islamising this country through uncontrolled immigration and state multiculturalism. They have begun to panic, because they at last realise what they have done, and rightly fear they cannot stop it.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

Salaam

Another update

It’s scary just how much David Cameron doesn’t seem to understand extremism

Instead of ignoring all the expert advice he’s been given, the Prime Minister should address the political roots of terrorism.

Imagine a Prime Minister, during the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, announcing in a speech that he intended to tackle terrorism head on. To do this, he would crack down on the churches which “quietly condone” the IRA, and criminalise opposition to “British values” and the “rule of law” amongst dissidents.

Forget about pursuing a political resolution to the conflict over Northern Ireland, says the PM – this is about ideology and a misplaced sense of “grievance” by the IRA. As part of a raft of new policies, “non-violent extremists” – such as late Ian Paisley perhaps – would be shut out of any political dialogue, since clearly they were a “gateway” to loyalist terrorism, and certainly in no way able to contribute towards a peaceful future.

Such a PM might be condemned as entirely unable to grasp the nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight, we could also say how entirely counter-productive the unnatural focus on religion and ideology was.

Well in 2015, we have a leader who just delivered a speech outlining how it was bad religion, and not politics, that is the cause of political violence. I use the phrase political violence because whether we are talking about Lee Rigby in the United Kingdom, or the Charleston shootings in the United States, or Anders Brevik in Oslo, we are talking about individuals who had political points to make with the lives they took.

Yet in his speech today, Cameron confidently stated that it was ideology that was the major factor in turning people to violence. This is despite the fact hundreds of academics, many who specialise in radicalisation and conflict, signed a public letter criticising the Government’s PREVENT policy’s obsession with the “unsubstantiated view that religious ideology is the primary driving factor for terrorism”. They argued instead that “academic research suggests that social, economic and political factors, as well as social exclusion, play a more central role in driving political violence than ideology.”

In his speech today Cameron also called non-violent extremists a “gateway” to violence. This is despite the fact that in 2010 a Whitehall report specifically argued the opposite, noting that only a handful of violent extremists had ties to non-violent extremist groups – directly in contradiction with Cameron’s own statements today.

Dr Matthew Francis, an academic researching radicalisation, specifically stresses that there is a difference between ideology and violence – “there are radicals that aren’t terrorists, but you also have terrorists who are not radical. It is important to make sure that these concepts are divorced.” This conveyor-belt theory on radicalisation has been discredited at every turn by experts and researchers, and is concerning not least because it casts the net of extremism so wide it undermines some very basic civil liberties.

t’s slightly scary how wrong Cameron is about violent extremism. He’s going against the academic consensus on radicalisation as well as the advice of his own civil servants. Instead, he’s apparently taking advice from Maajid Nawaz – a man whose most notable counter-extremism success is to get Tommy Robinson to leave the English Defence League. Nawaz describes himself as a former extremist, which appears to be his sole claim to expertise in the area of radicalisation. Unlike Nawaz, I’m not an extremist – and I’ve never been one either. I, like many millions of other British Muslims, have never seen the appeal of violence. If Cameron had asked me to advise him on his speech today, my advice would have been pretty straightforward.

Firstly, I’d tell him to address the political roots of terrorism – do this and the appeal of extremist ideology will disappear. For example, maybe it isn’t a great idea to give bombs to Saudi Arabia to deploy across Yemen. I mean, maybe it’s in the desperation and human suffering of nations which are bombed that groups like the Islamic State thrive. The Islamic State was born in post-war Iraq, it grew in the wake of conflict in Syria, and it is expanding in places like Libya. Despite this, Cameron still supports a bombing campaign in Yemen.

I’d probably also suggest Cameron not conflate religious conservatism with violent extremism. The new Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, was criticised for refusing to answer a question on whether homosexuality was a sin. Yet he still clarified his commitment to LGBT rights. He demonstrates it is possible to hold unpopular, even unsavoury, religious views while fully participating in society and civic life. Just because a Muslim believes the leadership of a global Caliph would be valuable to Muslims (for example, to resolve global debates about the dates of Islamic festivals), doesn’t mean he or she is supports the Islamic State.

And finally, I’d suggest he stop linking debates about integration to debates about violent extremism. Tackling forced marriage and female genital mutilation is important. But it has nothing to do with terrorism, and largely cuts across religious groups. Instead of calling on Muslims to ascribe to some imagined list of “British values”, Cameron would do well to recognise that British Muslims are already as British as is possible. Their strengths are Britain’s strengths and their failures are Britain’s failures. By ending the incessant questioning of British Muslims, the rhetoric of violent extremists is undermined.

Perhaps if he listened to any of this, we could then formulate a counter-terrorism policy that worked.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/news-watch/its-scary-just-how-much-david-cameron-doesnt-seem-to-understand-extremism

the best counter terrorism strategy is to collectively repent because God has promised to cast terror into the hearts of those criminals who refuse to submit to His laws as completed in the Quran and sunnah.
the punishment gets even worse when the rebellious criminals in God's kingdom try to form gangs called "armies" and use violence to fight against His obedient servants who work hard to establish His laws.

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Originally Posted by Abz2000

the best counter terrorism strategy is to collectively repent because God has promised to cast terror into the hearts of those criminals who refuse to submit to His laws as completed in the Quran and sunnah.
the punishment gets even worse when the rebellious criminals in God's kingdom try to form gangs called "armies" and use violence to fight against His obedient servants who work hard to establish His laws.

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Hey, I thought people had freedom of choice? Do the terrorists need to repent too? Or is what they do just fine?

everyone needs to repent, even God repents when people repent.
you need to re-read the story of Jonah bro.
innahu huwa at tawwaab arraheem.

Baqaara*[2:37]******** **فَتَلَقَّى آدَمُ مِن رَّبِّهِ كَلِمَاتٍ فَتَابَ عَلَيْهِ إِنَّهُ هُوَ التَّوَّابُ الرَّحِيمُ*
Fatalaqqa*adamu min rabbihi kalimatin fataba AAalayhi innahu huwa alttawwabu alrraheemu

Then learnt Adam from his Lord words of inspiration, and his Lord Turned towards him; for He is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.****

**[20:122]
******** **ثُمَّ اجْتَبَاهُ رَبُّهُ فَتَابَ عَلَيْهِ وَهَدَى
Thumma ijtabahu rabbuhu fataba AAalayhi wahada

But his Lord chose him (Jonah) (for His Grace): He turned to him, and gave him Guidance.

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Originally Posted by Abz2000

even God repents when people repent

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What sin that God has done so He repented?.

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Originally Posted by Abz2000

Baqaara*[2:37]******** ** إِنَّهُ هُوَ التَّوَّابُ الرَّحِيمُ*
innahu huwa alttawwabu alrraheemu

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Sahih International translation: Indeed, it is He who is the Accepting of repentance, the Merciful.

lol we need an arabic speaker to explain the definition of the term repent :)
even the aramaic and hebrew use it.

when we repent of our wicked ways which are in rebellion to God,
God repents of the punishment.

Brother ardianto, we mustn't confuse tawba with istighfar.


we'll often find that the interpreters resorted to interpreting when translating in order to catch the spirit over the letter, but it can get confusing when one tries to break it down from a different language with the aim of finding the letter.

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لَقَد تَّابَ الله عَلَى النَّبِيِّ وَالْمُهَاجِرِينَ وَالأَنصَارِ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوهُ فِي سَاعَةِ الْعُسْرَةِ مِن بَعْدِ مَا كَادَ يَزِيغُ قُلُوبُ فَرِيقٍ مِّنْهُمْ ثُمَّ تَابَ عَلَيْهِمْ إِنَّهُ بِهِمْ رَؤُوفٌ رَّحِيمٌ

{117*009:117*Khan:Allah has forgiven the Prophet (SAW), the Muhajirun (Muslim emigrants who left their homes and came to Al-Madinah) and the Ansar (Muslims of Al-Madinah) who followed him (Muhammad SAW) in the time of distress (Tabuk expedition, etc.), after the hearts of a party of them had nearly deviated (from the Right Path), but He accepted their repentance. Certainly, He is unto them full of Kindness, Most Merciful.

009:117*Maulana:Certainly Allah has turned in mercy to the Prophet and the Emigrants and the Helpers who followed him in the hour of hardship, after the hearts of a part of them were about to deviate; then He turned to them in mercy. Surely to them He is Compassionate, Merciful;

009:117*Pickthal:Allah hath turned in mercy to the Prophet, and to the Muhajirin and the Ansar who followed him in the hour of hardship. After the hearts of a party of them had almost swerved aside, then turned He unto them in mercy. Lo! He is Full of Pity, Merciful for them.

009:117*Rashad:GOD has redeemed the prophet, and the immigrants (Muhajireen) and the supporters who hosted them and gave them refuge (Ansar), who followed him during the difficult times. That is when the hearts of some of them almost wavered. But He has redeemed them, for He is Compassionate towards them, Most Merciful.

009:117*Sarwar:God pardoned the Prophet, the Emigrants, the Helpers, and those who followed them, when the hearts of some of them almost deviated (from the truth) in their hour of difficulty. God forgave them because of His Compassion and Mercy.

009:117*Shakir:Certainly Allah has turned (mercifully) to the Prophet and those who fled (their homes) and the helpers who followed him in the hour of straitness after the hearts of a part of them were about to deviate, then He turned to them (mercifully); surely to them He is Compassionate, Merciful.

009:117*Sherali:ALLAH has certainly turned with mercy to the Prophet and to the Emigrants and the Helpers who followed him in the hour of distress after the hearts of a party of them had almost swerved from duty. HE again turned to them with mercy. Surely, HE is to them Compassionate, Merciful.

009:117*Yusufali:Allah turned with favour to the Prophet, the Muhajirs, and the Ansar,- who followed him in a time of distress, after that the hearts of a part of them had nearly swerved (from duty); but He turned to them (also): for He is unto them Most Kind, Most Merciful.

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1And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,*2Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.*
3So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.*
4And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Nineveh Repents
5So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.*
6For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered*him*with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.*
7And he caused*it*to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:*
8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that*isin their hands.*

9Who can tell*if*God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did*it*not.
Jonah chapter 3 kjv

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a bit like when God says:
fadhkuroonee adhkurukum washkuroo lee wa laa takfuroon.
remember Me, i shall remember you, and be grateful to me, and do not reject Me.

awfoo bi 'ahdee ooffee bi 'ahdikum
fulfill your covenant with Me, and i shall fullfill My covenant with you.

it's not that God has to, but that He has set a process and law in motion - and has made oppression haraam upon Himself.

https://www.islamicboard.com/images/...hakvzy5b-2.png

https://www.islamicboard.com/images/...9gzmsgek-2.png

https://www.islamicboard.com/images/...snvkbqza-2.png

May Allah reward you with good in this world and in eternity for your effort respected sister, i checked again just in case and found that the translation in sahih international was off the mark..

“At-Tawwab” is one of*Allah’s 99 Names.

The meaning of*At-Tawwab is “The Ever Returning, Ever Relenting”
https://www.islamicboard.com/images/.../AtTawwb-1.jpg

i thibk this is the most beautiful piece of recitation i have ever heard - the word tawbah is reapeated in many variations.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/veg3p6dj71...a%20H.mp3?dl=0

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Originally Posted by Abz2000

lol we need an arabic speaker to explain the definition of the term repent
even the aramaic and hebrew use it.

when we repent of our wicked ways which are in rebellion to God,
God repents of the punishment.

Brother ardianto, we mustn't confuse tawba with istighfar.

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English-Indonesian dictionary translate repent in "bertobat". It's means "regretting the sin, ask forgiveness, and stop doing sin again". The word "tobat/taubat" itself is derived from Arabic word "tawbah". Yes, Malay/Indonesian language contains many words that derived from Arabic. And of course I know the difference between tawbah and istighfar because istighfar itself can be found in Indonesian language, it's mean "saying Astaghfirullah al-adzim"

At-Tawwab in 99 Allah names does not mean "ever relenting" , but means "the granter and acceptor of tawbah (repentance). Allah is the forgiver (Al-Ghafur) of human sins, is the pardoner (A-Afuww). If Allah repents, then who accept His repentance?.

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Originally Posted by Abz2000

**[20:122]
******** **ثُمَّ اجْتَبَاهُ رَبُّهُ فَتَابَ عَلَيْهِ وَهَدَى
Thumma ijtabahu rabbuhu fataba AAalayhi wahada

But his Lord chose him (Jonah) (for His Grace): He turned to him, and gave him Guidance.

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This verse is not about prophet Yunus (as), but about prophet Adam (as). You can read surah At-Thaahaa from verse 115 into verse 123.

:)

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Originally Posted by ardianto

English-Indonesian dictionary translate repent in "bertobat". It's means "regretting the sin, ask forgiveness, and stop doing sin again". The word "tobat/taubat" itself is derived from Arabic word "tawbah". Yes, Malay/Indonesian language contains many words that derived from Arabic. And of course I know the difference between tawbah and istighfar because istighfar itself can be found in Indonesian language, it's mean "saying Astaghfirullah al-adzim"

At-Tawwab in 99 Allah names does not mean "ever relenting" , but means "the granter and acceptor of tawbah (repentance). Allah is the forgiver (Al-Ghafur) of human sins, is the pardoner (A-Afuww). If Allah repents, then who accept His repentance?.


This verse is not about prophet Yunus (as), but about prophet Adam (as). You can read surah At-Thaahaa from verse 115 into verse 123.

:)

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my mistake, i neglected to check the verse and mistakenly thought it was about Yunus pbuh.

regarding the term taubah though you would need to research further bro.
it means "returning".

you have the term "taqwa" which is "adhering/clinging to/being on side"
and when you lose the adherence to Allah and go astray, you're on the opposite side, the dark side.
and God's face is turned away/darkened/displeased.
until you "return", then God also "returns" - If He pleases

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Found in:*Knowledge
Al Bukhari - Hadith no: 66

Narrated: Abu Waqid Al-Laithi

While Allah's Apostle was sitting in the mosque with some people, three men came.
Two of them came in front of Allah's Apostle and the third one went away.
The two persons kept on standing before Allah's Apostle for a while and then one of them found a place in the circle and sat there while the other sat behind the gathering, and the third one went away.

When Allah's Apostle finished his preaching, he said, "Shall I tell you about these three persons?

One of them be-took himself to Allah, so Allah took him into His grace and mercy and accommodated him,
the second felt shy from Allah, so Allah sheltered Him in His mercy (and did not punish him),
while the third turned his face from Allah and went away, so Allah turned His face from him likewise. "

http://ahadith.co.uk/hadithbynarrato...l-Laithi&bid=1

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Exerpt from hadith 7149 in Sahih Muslim. Book of piety and softening of hearts.

We went on till we came to Jabir b. Abdullah in the mosque and he was busy in observing prayer in one cloth which he had joined at its opposite ends.
I made my way through the people till I sat between him and the Qibla and I said: May Allah have mercy upon you. Do you observe prayer with one cloth on your body whereas your mantle is lying at your side?
He pointed me with his hand towards my breast just like this and he separated his fingers and bent them in the shape of a bow. And (he said): I thought that a fool like you should come to me so that he should see me as I do and he should then also do like it. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) came to us in this very mosque and he had in his hand the twig of the palm-tree and he saw mucus towards the Qibla of the mosque and he erased it with the help of the twig.

He then came to us and said: Who amongst you likes that Allah should turn His face away from him?
We were afraid.
He then again said: Who amongst you likes that Allah should turn His face away from him?
We were afraid.
He again said: Who amongst you likes that Allah should turn His face away from him?
We said: Allah's Messenger, none of us likes it. And he said: If one amongst you stands for prayer, Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, is before him he should not spit in front of him, or on his right side, but should spit on his left side beneath his left foot and if he is impelled to do so all of a sudden (in spite of himself) he should then spit in his cloth and fold it in some part of it. (and he further said: ) Bring some sweet-smelling thing. A young man who belonged to our tribe stood up, went and brought scent in his palm. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) took that and applied it to the end of that twig and then touched the place where there had been mucus. Jabir said: This is why you should apply scent to your mosques.

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"Allah says, 'I am as my servant expects Me to be, and I am with him when he remembers me.
If he thinks of Me, I think of him.
If he mentions Me in company, I mention him in an even better company.
When he comes closer to Me by a handspan, I come closer to him an arm's length.
If he draws closer to Me by an arm's length, I draw closer by a*distance of two outstretched arms nearer to him. If my servant comes to Me walking, I go to him running."*
(Al-Bukhari)

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Attila the Hun used to send a message "Prepare to be enslaved or die". I wonder if "Islamic State" models themselves on him rather than on any prophets? To my mind actions speak louder than words. When the West says "freedom and democracy" and slaughters people in vast numbers, I think what kind of "freedom" is that? And when brigands slaughter many in the name of God, I wonder what god are they truly worshipping? Or they could be totally godless and doing it for the money.

Remember the prophets were the messengers of God (the messenger ones I mean). They only delivered the word, people can take it or leave it because it is between themselves and God and no one else's business. A political force that enforces the word on the people has no authority from God. God is Lord NOT some self-righteous people. God is judge NOT some self-righteous people.

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Originally Posted by Karl

Remember the prophets were the messengers of God (the messenger ones I mean). They only delivered the word, people can take it or leave it because it is between themselves and God and no one else's business.

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when you say "messenger" (rasul) with exception to "prophet" (nabi) (news bearer/bringer of tidings) it's difficult even for the scholars to differentiate properly - despite it being known and clear that Allah swt makes a distinction (Allah knws best) - which ones do you mean?

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Originally Posted by Karl

A political force that enforces the word on the people has no authority from God. God is Lord NOT some self-righteous people. God is judge NOT some self-righteous people.

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[/quote]

Is it that you have understood this from the Quran or simply from hawaa?
secondly, what do you think it is that should be legislated and enforced? And based on what?

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Sahih International: [And they are] those who, if We give them authority in the land, establish prayer and give zakah and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong. And to Allah belongs the outcome of [all] matters.
Quran 22:41

Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah , so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur'an. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah ? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment.
Quran 9:111

O you who have believed, whoever of you should revert from his religion
– Allah will bring forth [in place of them] a people He will love and who will love Him
humble toward the believers, powerful against the disbelievers;
they strive in the cause of Allah and do not fear the blame of a critic.
That is the favor of Allah; He bestows it upon whom He wills. And Allah is all-Encompassing and Knowing.
Quran 5:54

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Abu Bakr (Abdullah ibn Abi Quhafa) - Al Siddeeq's inaugural speech:

I have been given the authority over you, and I am not the best of you.
If I do well, help me; and if I do wrong, set me right.
Sincere regard for truth is loyalty and disregard for truth is treachery.
The weak amongst you shall be strong with me until I have secured his rights, if God wills;
and the strong amongst you shall be weak with me until I have wrested from him the rights of others, if God wills.
Obey me so long as I obey God and His Messenger.
But if I disobey God and His Messenger, you owe me no obedience.
Arise for your prayer, God have mercy upon you.

Abu Bakr's Caliphate lasted for 27 months, during which he crushed the rebellion of the Arab tribes throughout the*Arabian Peninsula*in the successful*Ridda Wars.
In the last months of his rule, he launched campaigns against the*Sassanid Empire*and the*Eastern Roman Empire*(Byzantine Empire) and thus set in motion a historical trajectory*(continued later on by*Umar*and*Uthman ibn Affan) that in just a few short decades would lead to one of the*largest empires in history.
He had little time to pay attention to the administration of state, though state affairs remained stable during his Caliphate.
On the advice of Umar and Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah he agreed to have a salary from state treasury and abolish his cloth trade.

It was once the internal struggles with the murtaddeen of the peninsula were over that 'Umar ibn Al Khattab (may Allah have mercy on him) was able to establish an orderly inter-continental state while expanding the rule of Allah east and west.

These were neither prophets - nor messengers.
they were level headed, seasoned men of God.

it's easy to detachedly condemn a people who were slaughtered for over 20 years with no recourse to justice, and even easier it seems, when they come to the inevitable truth that there is none who has the right to be obeyed in disobedience to God.

Salaam

Another update

‘Extremist is the secular word for heretic': the Hizb ut-Tahrir leader who insists on his right to speak

As David Cameron lays out a counter-extremism strategy that he calls ‘the struggle of our generation’, the voice of the ‘extremists’ has been missing. So what does Dr Abdul Wahid really believe?

Since the Islamic State atrocity in Tunisia David Cameron has made a series of statements pointing the finger at those he calls extremists. These people, says the prime minister, refuse to subscribe to British values such as free speech and the rule of law.

Cameron does not assert that all extremists are terrorists. He does, however, warn that extremists form a pool where terrorism can flourish and from which killers emerge. This week, in a headline-grabbing speech, he laid out a counter-extremism strategy to fight what he described as “the struggle of our generation”.

As the prime minister has developed this theme he has persistently raised one group’s name as the most noxious: Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Cameron called for HT, the pan Islamist movement which presses for the restoration of the caliphate and introduction of sharia law, to be banned in 2007, following the example of Tony Blair two years earlier. He named it again a month ago in his Today programme interview in the wake of the Tunisian atrocity.

As the latest round of this debate has unfolded, one voice has been noticeably absent: that of the alleged extremist. And it seems worth examining exactly what form that extremism takes. So it is that I go to a leafy street in West London, where Dr Abdul Wahid, chairman of the executive committee of the of the British wing of HT, lives with his wife and two sons.

I have known Wahid for around a decade, ever since the time of the Iraq invasion. We have dinner occasionally. As well as his role at HT, he’s a GP. Today the weather is warm and he answers the door in a safari suit. He bought it, he says, on a recent pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. (Later, he emails to specify that it’s from Medina, explaining “Saudi is an entity that was conceived in the Foreign Office, not in Islam”.)

His front room is a very ordinary environment for a man who leads an organisation so frequently accused of bigotry and worse. In recent years HT has been charged with trying to bring down democracy, antisemitism and suppressing women. It also outrages many foreign governments. When the head of the Pakistan army visited Britain in January, getting Britain to clamp down on HT was top of his agenda.

So, then: what does it feel like to be singled out by the government as an extremist? “Extremist,” says Wahid, “is the secular word for heretic. It means that you don’t subscribe to certain political and social norms.” Blair and Cameron,” he adds, “suffer from the disease of populism. Blair felt like after 7/7 he had to do something, and Cameron echoes a lot of that kind of talk. He is relying on the ignorance of most people and trying to get away with it.

“Someone murders people in Tunisia, and he goes on talking about people in Britain with political ideas and religious views he doesn’t like, who have nothing to do with violence. And he spins it in a way that makes it look almost seamless.” But what of the link, which has been made by many besides the prime minister, between extremist opinions and terrorism? Wahid is well prepared for this question: “Nobody serious has any evidence of that link. And in fact, several big players have actually refuted it.” He cites the work by Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and forensic psychiatrist, which (he says) challenges the notion of a linear progression towards radicalisation. He quotes then MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller telling the Chilcot enquiry that the Iraq invasion provoked Muslim terrorism. He has chapter and verse from a leaked cabinet memo from 2010 saying there was no “typical pathway to violent extremism”.

What of elections? In Britain, I suggest, we believe in democracy, free speech, tolerance. His critics say that he doesn’t believe in any of those things and in particular, not in democracy. Wahid replies: “Well, we have a view on democracy. I believe in voting, I believe in elections. The caliphate we want to see is one where a ruler would be elected, accountable, not above the law; accountable to people, to political groups, to elected assembly, to independent media.”

Wahid says David Cameron’s belief in democracy is just skin deep: “You don’t have to be a member of HT to say this, there are an awful lot of flaws and contradictions in the democratic system.

“Let us just remind ourselves at this juncture that Britain’s head of state is actually a hereditary monarch; she’s not elected and her successor will not be elected. Britain’s legislature has two houses, one of which is an appointed house. Cameron goes and has tea and dinner with the royal families of the Middle East. So suddenly pulling out the democracy card is a little bit rich.

“And that’s without saying that in democracies the people with voting power are not actually the masses. And if you need an example of that, just look at Greece. Greece had a popular referendum a week ago, and that decision is basically overturned by closed-door meetings in Europe. That’s democracy as it exists.”

I move onto another topic: HT and women. Critics of the organisation point to its draft constitution, which states “the primary role of a woman is that of mother and wife, she is an honour that must be protected”. Does Wahid agree?

“The view of HT on all those things is a traditional Muslim view: women and men before God have the same value, the same worth, the same status. The instructions for human beings, men and women, are broadly speaking, the same. However, there are distinctions in the way that Islam addresses men and women. Islam puts the burden of providing for the family on the man, which doesn’t mean to say that a woman can’t work.

What about his own wife? “My wife stopped working when we had kids. Before then she worked as a teacher, before that she worked in market research. My mum worked most of her adult life. I have two sisters, who are married, have kids, and they both worked before they had kids; one still works, even with kids. And that was the choice of my wife, when she gave up work.”

Do you believe that women can and should go into politics? “Yes, absolutely.” Can they become the caliph? “No, because of the specific injunction of the prophet, they can do everything except become the ruler.

“They can be the Judge, they can be in the assembly, they should be in the elected assembly. In our own drafted constitution it says that.

“They can be in the administrative services of the state. In the time of one of the prophet’s successors, peace be with him, he appointed a female judge in his time, you know, 14 centuries ago. And in fact HT has a very active political women’s movement, they organise their own conferences and meetings.”

I remind Wahid that men and women are segregated by a screen at these HT meetings. “Yes, the women and men sit separately, usually with a sort of screen between them, which is the normal Islamic etiquette. Actually, we believe very much that it’s the way it should be.

“It should be that women and men engage in political discourse actively. Our women’s section all across the world, by the way, organises conferences that address thousands of people.”

I suggest the HT women’s section is an affront to modern British sensibilities: “Is it? Do you ever listen to Woman’s Hour on Radio 4? Is it an affront to British sensibilities that there should be a regular magazine programme on one of its main broadcasting stations which is dedicated to women? If Mr Cameron thinks it’s in affront to Britain that there is a women’s section in HT, then tell him to go and say that to the Women’s Institute. I daresay a fair number of the Conservative party belong to men only clubs in the City.”

I turn to the charge that his organisation is antisemitic. Fifteen years ago HT published a notorious article entitled The Muslim Ummah will never submit to the Jews. It contained unpleasant language, some of which I read out to Wahid, and invite him to denounce the article. He refuses. “HT is not antisemitic at all, but we are absolutely anti-Zionist … It actually doesn’t matter whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish, if you’re Zionist, we cannot support someone who believes that it’s right that the land was usurped from some people and given over to others, especially when the occupying force is particularly murderous and bloodthirsty, as it has been.

“You will never find those words being used about Jews living in other parts of Middle Eastern world, Iraq, Morocco or those places. And you should never find those words being used about that.

“And you will never find this language used by us, because probably here we have more understanding of the particular European experience, and what it means.”

Once again I invite Wahid to denounce the pamphlet. “Of course I am not going to denounce it! Because it’s about a leaflet, a small extract of the leaflet, which was written in response to murder, brutality. The people who wrote this in original Arabic in the context it was written, and the people who read it, understand what it means. When you take it out of context, you translate it into English, you take it to Europe and put an interpretation to it, which is not what it was, you find that people misunderstand it. But I am not going to denounce the leaflet.”

Later on, he emails about all this, saying he has now read it. “I appreciate through a European lens, after the massacre of millions of Jews by Europe, any generic negative language about Jewish people sets off alarms,” he writes. “But through a Middle East lens, where ‘Israel’ calls itself the Jewish state and the term Jew and Israel are used synonymously, where people see themselves in a war, people understand this language as the rhetoric of conflict and understand it within the context of that region and NOT Jews per se.”

So what about Britain? Would he fight for it? “You know what, I have no issue with serving the people of this country, but I wouldn’t fight for any country or a flag, a national flag. I think the Islamic idea of fighting is actually fighting for an idea, for a principle, it isn’t about fighting for a flag.”

Does Wahid regard himself as a subject of the Queen? “I have no particular issue with the Queen, I am sure she’s a very pleasant old lady. But I don’t regard myself as her subject. And, by the way, I never did.”

Would he support those who fought against British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan? “If someone invaded a country, then that would be their right to do that.” For justification he produces a quote from Winston Churchill: “It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth”.

I ask him why he joined HT. Wahid cites a possibly surprising reference: Lady Evelyn Cobbold, daughter of the seventh earl of Dunmore. “She became a Muslim in an odd way. Someone took her to a private audience with the Pope. The Pope asked her which denomination she was. She answered she was a Muslim. This spontaneous answer shocked her, although probably not as much as it shocked the Pope.”

Wahid takes down a book from his shelves and reads Cobbold’s account: “What possessed me I don’t pretend to know, as I had not given a thought to Islam for many years. A match was lit and I then and there determined to read up and study. The more I read, the more I studied, the more convinced I became that Islam was the most practical religion, and the one most calculated to solve the world’s many perplexing problems, and to bring to humanity peace and happiness.”

Wahid adds: “When I read that, years later, it echoed exactly with what my own journey was.”

Wahid has a well-organised mind, perhaps in part the product of his upbringing. His own family came to the UK from Pakistan. His father worked as a travel agent and made many sacrifices to send his son to Merchant Taylors’, a private school in north London. He also understands Britain, and the contradictions embedded in the British identity, uncomfortably well.

He is widely read, too. Before I leave, I look at the books on the wall. There is the collection of commentaries on the Qur’an by Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood theorist who has executed in Egypt by Nasser in 1966, and became (in part through Ayman al-Zawahiri) one of the inspirations for al-Qaida. Kissinger’s Diplomacy is there, as is Niall Ferguson’s Empire and Robert Peston’s Who Runs Britain?, alongside Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill and Ibn Khaldun’s masterpiece Al Muqaddimah: “It’s a very good book. I actually got it when I was working in obstetrics, and there is a chapter on midwifery which is fantastic.”

A man’s bookshelves can hardly be said to define him. All the same, they do teach an ironic lesson about the range of allowable voices. You can say many things about Wahid, and be appalled by much of what he says. But in a democracy he surely has the right to say it. Whatever the government thinks.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/news-watch/extremist-is-the-secular-word-for-heretic-the-hizb-ut-tahrir-leader-who-insists-on-his-right-to-speak

Salaam

Another update

UK school-children expressing support for Palestine accused of 'terrorist-like' views

SCHOOLCHILDREN in the UK who express support for Palestine face being questioned by police and referred to a counter-radicalisation programme for youngsters deemed at risk of being drawn into terrorism under new laws requiring teachers to monitor students for extremism.

One schoolboy told Al Jazeera he was accused of holding "terrorist-like" views by a police officer who questioned him for taking leaflets into school promoting a boycott of Israel.

The case reflects concerns raised about the expansion of the government's Prevent counter-extremism strategy into schools, with critics complaining that teachers are being expected to act as the "eyes and ears of the state".

Since the beginning of July, teachers have had a statutory duty to monitor and report children who they believe may be susceptible to radicalisation, although Prevent engagement officers, who are usually also police officers, have long been active in schools in areas with significant Muslim populations.

Child suspects

The boy, who was then 15 and attending school in a southern English town, said he was also told that "Free Palestine" badges that he wore were "extremist". Al Jazeera is not naming the student or the school to protect his identity.

"He asked me what I thought of the leaflet," the boy said, describing how a police officer told him he had been brought into the school to "deal with this sort of extremism".

"I explained to him my views about freedom and justice and that I supported Palestine. I said I thought Israel should have tough sanctions put upon it and he said these could be radical beliefs," the boy said.

"He said these are terrorist-like beliefs that you have. He explicitly said you cannot speak about this conflict at school with your friends," the boy said.

The leaflet, produced by Friends of al-Aqsa, an organisation campaigning for Palestinian rights, promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

The boy said he had subsequently had numerous run-ins with teachers and with the officer, who had an office in the school.

"I asked my form tutor about Prevent and whether he would act as an informant if I said anything, and he said, 'I am uncomfortable with that but that is what I have to do,'" the boy said.

Spying or paranoia?

Al Jazeera has identified other examples suggesting that Palestine-related activism is something that teachers and public officials are being encouraged to look out for as part of their Prevent duties.

A leaflet produced for public sector workers to help them make judgements about referrals to Channel, a support programme for young people considered to be vulnerable to recruitment by violent extremists, includes a case study in which a student's discussion of "Palestine and other international conflicts" is deemed salient information.

A report on counter-extremism policy published by the think-tank Claystone also cited the case of a teenager identified as requiring deradicalisation for attending a protest against an Israeli diplomat.

"We've heard of the police going into schools to talk about Prevent to teachers and saying things like, 'If a kid thinks the West is at war with Islam it might be a cause for concern.' Or if a child goes on a demonstration against the bombing of Gaza, 'Keep an eye on him,'" Alex Kenny of the National Union of Teachers told Al Jazeera.

Prevent has long been a source of resentment among many British Muslims, with critics complaining that it sows mistrust of Muslims and subjects them to discriminatory levels of surveillance and harassment.

In an open letter this month, hundreds of academics warned that the extension of Prevent would have a "chilling effect on open debate, free speech and political dissent".

Addressing those concerns on July 19 in a speech at a school in Birmingham, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said critics of counter-terrorism policies were paranoid.

"The world is not conspiring against Islam; the security services aren't behind terrorist attacks; our new Prevent duty for schools is not about criminalising or spying on Muslim children. This is paranoia in the extreme," said Cameron.

But Ibtihal Bsis, a barrister researching the impact of Prevent, said that distrust of the strategy was motivated by genuine grievances.

"Children are now being told by their parents not to share any political views whatsoever," Bsis told Al Jazeera. "Some children are being asked questions like 'What do you think of ISIL?' to entrap them, so that is very concerning."

Fearmongering

Ismail Patel, chairman of Friends of al-Aqsa, dismissed allegations that the organisation's leaflets were extremist and accused the government of "veering towards totalitarianism".

"People are scared to talk about Palestine. A lot of mosques now will not put posters up. There is fear in the community so there is self-censorship and self-policing," said Patel. "That really feeds the process of radicalisation because they are not allowing individuals to express their grievances."

Bill Bolloten, an educational consultant involved in #EducationNotSurveillance, a campaign network, said there was widespread nervousness among school leaders about the implementation of Prevent in classrooms, and said that many teachers were still in the dark about what was expected of them.

"It is co-opting a range of non-security professionals to be the eyes and ears of the state," Bolloten told Al Jazeera.

"Quite normal teenage behaviours will be viewed in an entirely different way. There is huge potential in this to make mistakes and those mistakes could have lifelong consequences for the children involved," Bolloten said.

A government spokesperson from the Department for Education told Al Jazeera: "School staff should use their professional judgement in identifying children who might be at risk of radicalisation and act proportionately. Good schools already do this and there is guidance available for schools to use."

"This doesn't and shouldn't stop schools from discussing controversial issues, and will give pupils a safe space to develop the knowledge to challenge extremist beliefs," the spokesperson said.

The boy, who is now 16, left school in June and intends to continue his studies elsewhere. Since then he said he had been visited at home by a Prevent officer and a case worker who identified himself as working for Channel, the programme for young people deemed vulnerable to radicalisation.

During the visit, the boy said the police officer had raised his voice when he and his mother spoke to each other in Persian, his mother's first language, telling the boy, "Stop trying to be clever with me!"

He said he had been asked about his views about ISIL and the war in Syria even though he is a Shia Muslim, something which he believes most of those who questioned him did not fully understand.

"The Channel officer was more understanding," said the boy.

"He said they were happy that I was not 'the ISIS type'. He said if I had any concerns, maybe about friends, that I could call him. And he said, 'From now on nothing further is going to happen unless you do something similar.'

"I'm not sure what he meant by that."

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/uk-school-children-expressing-suport-for-palestine-accused-of-having-terrorist-like-views