Event: Syria, Gaza and the Criminalisation of Islam
Recent events from the Middle East have placed the Muslim community in Britain in the public eye once more with their every word and action coming under microscopic scrutiny by the media and politicians. This is only the latest chapter in an ideological attack that has been ongoing for significantly longer.
Whereas the attacks on Islamic concepts of war, political governance and the unity of Muslim lands are nothing new, they have now increased on an unprecedented scale in the wake of the rise of ISIS and its declaration of a Caliphate. The matter is not about supporting or opposing the version of a Caliphate as demonstrated by ISIS but rather the criminalisation of Islamic political thought and ideology. The concepts of jihad, shariah and khilafah are not the exclusive possession of ISIS but core Islamic doctrines subscribed to by almost one third's of the world's population. It is telling that the government's treatment of ISIS is similar to its treatment of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Taliban, despite the enormous differences of belief and methodology between the groups.
The Islamophobic nature of the criminalisation of those who believe in fighting in Syria against Assad is underlined by the lack of concern for British Jews who fight in the Israeli Occupation Forces, particularly at times where they are engaged in war crimes and other atrocities, such as the recent attack on Gaza.
On the flips side, Muslims who wish to aid their brothers and sisters through the provision of humanitarian aid via aid convoys are having their homes raided, being harassed by the security services and are effectively being accused of engaging in terrorism. Charities are having their bank accounts closed without explanation and are coming under investigation by the Charity Commission simply for being involved in crisis zones like Gaza and Syria. Witch-hunts such as the Trojan Horse hoax and the mass hysteria over issues of the niqab, halal food and conservative Muslim values demonstrate that the criminalisation is spreading beyond Middle Eastern politics. Individuals and organisations within the Muslim community who have been speaking out against these policies are now under attack. They have had their organisation, business and bank accounts arbitrarily closed. Even their children's bank accounts have been closed. They are maligned in the media as terrorist sympathisers, extremists and jihadists. Some have even been imprisoned.
The common element across all these cases is that those targeted cared for the oppressed and for those who are suffering. They have been criminalised because they cared.
Join CAGE at this series of events around the country to unite the Muslim communities against this criminalisation of our faith, our beliefs, our mosques and organisations, and our leaders. The following regional events will take place with the large conference taking place on 20 September at the Waterlily in London.
Sunday 14 September - 6pm
Pakistani Community Centre, Park Hall, London Road, Reading RG1 2PA
Jamal Harwood
Dr Adnan Siddiqui
Dr Uthman Lateef
Anas al-Tikriti
Taji Mustafa
Wednesday 17 September - 7pm
East Pearl Banqueting Centre, Longsight, Manchester
Ibrahim Hewitt
Abdullah Andalusi
Jahangir Mohammed
Friday 19 September - 6.30pm
Muslim Student House (the Daar), Moseley, Birmingham
Dr Uthman Lateef
Ismail Adam Patel
Abdullah Andalusi
Dr Abdul Wahid
Fahad Ansari
And another
How Britain funds the 'propaganda war' against Isis in Syria
Government contractors effectively run a press office for opposition fighters but communications conceal UK’s role
The British government is waging information warfare in Syria by funding media operations for some rebel fighting groups, in the foreign front of what David Cameron has called “the propaganda war” against Islamic State.
The campaign aims to boost the reputation of what the government calls the “moderate armed opposition”, a complex and shifting alliance of armed factions.
Deciding which factions to support is risky for the government because many groups have become increasingly extremist as the five-year civil war grinds on.
Contractors hired by the Foreign Office but overseen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) produce videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups, and effectively run a press office for opposition fighters.
Materials are circulated in the Arabic broadcast media and posted online with no indication of British government involvement.
As the Guardian has reported, the Home Office’s Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism is running a parallel effort within the UK, aiming to bring about “behavioural and attitudinal change” among British Muslims by producing anti-Isis messaging “at an industrial pace and scale”.
In both the foreign and domestic campaigns, the government’s role is often concealed. Messages are put out under the banner of apparently independent groups – community organisations in the UK, and armed groups in Syria.
The UK regards information as a vital element of modern conflict. The MoD has drawn up a doctrine describing information as “so prevalent, potent and unavoidable that it forms as much a part of the strategic environment as the terrain or weather”, and saying how it should be managed through “strategic communications”.
The UK’s propaganda effort for the Syrian armed opposition began after the government failed to persuade parliament to support military action against the Assad regime. In autumn 2013, the UK embarked on behind-the-scenes work to influence the course of the war by shaping perceptions of opposition fighters.
Contract documents seen by the Guardian show the government appears to view the project as a way to maintain a foothold in the country until there can be greater British military involvement, offering “the capability to expand back into the strategic space as and when the opportunity arises”.
Through its Conflict and Stability Fund the government is spending £2.4m on private contractors working from Istanbul to deliver “strategic communications and media operations support to the Syrian moderate armed opposition” (MAO).
The contract is part of a broader propaganda effort focused on Syria, with other elements intended to promote “the moderate values of the revolution” and help mould a Syrian sense of national identity that will reject both the Assad regime and Isis.
The documents call for contractors to “select and train a spokesman able to represent all the MAO groups as a single unified voice”, as well as providing media coaching to “influential MAO officials” and running a round-the-clock “MAO central media office” with “media production capacity”. One British source with knowledge of the contracts in action said the government was essentially running a “Free Syrian army press office”.
The contract to support the moderate armed opposition was briefly held by Regester Larkin, an international communications consultancy, where it was headed up by a former lieutenant colonel in the British army who had also worked as a strategic communications specialist at the MoD. He set up a company called Innovative Communications & Strategies, or InCoStrat, which took over the contract from November 2014, a Regester Larkin spokeswoman told the Guardian.
An InCoStrat spokesman confirmed: “InCoStrat is providing media and communication support to the moderate Syrian opposition to assist Syrians to better convey the reality of war and those involved in it.”
Both emphasised the close supervision of the work by the British government. An insider also described “tremendous oversight”, with handlers from the FCO and MoD meeting contractors up to three times a week. “They had the last say in everything,” the source said.
Much of the material produced under these contracts is day-to-day wartime propaganda, aimed at Syrian civilian and military audiences. It includes bulletins of successful military engagements, or videos of opposition fighters handing out food.
Some media, however, serve an additional military purpose, two sources familiar with the projects said. For example, a video of a shoulder-to-air missile shooting down a regime helicopter signals to those inside Syria that the group is well-armed and effective. But it also sends a message to those arming the group. “That’s good PR to go back to the Pentagon,” the insider said.
An MoD spokeswoman emphasised that the groups the UK supports are moderate. But identifying which groups really are is fraught with risk, as they can commit unpalatable acts or ally with groups considered unacceptably extremist.
The contracting document seen by the Guardian lists several “mid-level units” as examples of groups considered to be part of the “moderate armed opposition”. These include Harakat al-Hazm, which received military assistance from the US, and Jaysh al-Islam, a group reportedly set up with Saudi backing.
But six months before the document was written in November 2014, Human Rights Watch identified Jaysh al-Islam as the likely kidnappers of four human rights activists in December 2013. The four are widely assumed to have been murdered. The group has also been criticised for using imprisoned civilians as human shields, and for releasing a glossy video last June showing the grisly murder of 18 captive Isis fighters, a war crime under the Geneva convention.
The government initially denied that the group was referenced in its contracting documents. It later acknowledged that it was mentioned but said it was referenced in the document as part of a description of how other groups had described the moderate armed opposition.
An MoD spokeswoman said: “Jaysh al-Islam has never been given any assistance by the MoD, FCO or any contractors working on HMG’s [Her Majesty’s government] behalf … All recipients of our assistance are rigorously assessed to ensure they are not involved in any extremist activity or human rights abuses.”
A source said contractors had provided media support for Harakat al-Hazm, but the group collapsed in March 2015 and its weaponry, including anti-tank missiles provided by the US, fell into the hands of the al-Nusra Front, a group that has pledged allegiance to al-Qaida.
An MoD spokeswoman said: “The UK has been a longstanding supporter of the moderate opposition in Syria, who are standing up to both the tyranny of the Assad regime and the poisonous and murderous ideology of Daesh [Isis].”
Another update, UKIPs getting in on the act. There getting slicker with their propaganda, wanting to 'save' us.
Ukip's Lisa Duffy wants to ban Muslim veil in public venues
Leadership hopeful also wants to close down Islamic faith schools and prohibit sharia courts in Britain
A Ukip leadership candidate is calling for a ban on Muslim women wearing a veil in public buildings, shopping centres and on buses and trains.
Lisa Duffy will also demand the closure of Islamic faith schools until the problem of Islamist terrorism is dealt with, as well as a “complete and comprehensive ban” on sharia courts in the UK.
In a speech in London, Duffy will say her proposals are designed to foster integration, arguing: “Muslims who were born in this country … are as British as I am and I simply want them to feel as British as I do.”
But a rival in the race to succeed Nigel Farage will warn Ukip against focusing its efforts on issues such as Islam, warning it risks being seen as “small-minded” if it chases “the bigot vote”.
Launching his own leadership campaign in Manchester, the Ukip MEP Bill Etheridge will say: “I am proposing that as a party we focus on our policies, cementing libertarianism into our DNA.
“That means not focusing on small issues like Islam which makes us look small-minded – I’m not chasing the bigot vote.”
Duffy – who is backed by Suzanne Evans, the former Ukip spokeswoman – will say she wants to create a “path of opportunity” for young Muslim women who were told by men what they should wear, what leisure activities they should pursue and who they should marry.
“Why should I, as a white, Christian woman, effectively enjoy greater civil and human rights and freedoms than others?” the Huntingdonshire district councillor will ask. “My ambition is that everyone, from every community, should be able to enjoy the same rights and have the same independent control over their lives and their bodies as I do.”
She will describe the veil as “a symbol of aggressive separatism that can only foster extremism” and will claim that it is often “forced on women by men who view them as their property”.
While stopping short of a complete ban on the veil, Duffy said that under her leadership, Ukip would advocate a “show your face in public” policy.
“On our public transport networks, in public buildings, banks, stores and shopping precincts – all those places where teenagers are told to take their hoodies down and where motorcyclists are expected to remove their helmets – it is only reasonable to expect everyone to show their faces,” she will say.
“Again, it is about making sure there is one law for all, rather than making an exception for a community because we are frightened of causing offence. There is no offence to be taken if all are treated equally.”
Duffy will say the rule should apply “just as much to the retinues accompanying Middle Eastern princes to London as it will to Muslim women living in Britain” and that it should not be regarded as Islamophobic for someone to politely request a woman to remove a veil in public.
Another update, stating the obvious but its good to keep reminding people.
The Focus on Ideology to stop the cycles of violence “Stands little chance of success”
Counter terrorism policies in the UK have always sought to target ideology as the root cause of political violence. The former prime minister David Cameron was clear that in order to defeat violent groups the creed underpinning the ideology would have to be challenged, both the non-violent and violent as he phrased it. This approach has taken hold of the government’s direction and attracted widespread criticism because it is too broad, ill defined and threatens freedom of speech.
The government refuses to acknowledge the context from which these groups emanate and why individuals would feel an affinity towards them.This counter productive approach was epitomised by David Cameron’s complete dismissal of the role political grievances play, calling it the “grievance justification” argument. He deliberately conflates between understanding the paths to violence in order to address it and between justifying it. This has been a hallmark of the PREVENT policy, where genuine debate is silenced in exchange for a superficial and politically expedient discourse that doesn’t address the underlying causes of violence.
READ MORE: PREVENT: A STORY OF COMMUNITY RESENTMENT
Over 300 academics signed a joint statement condemning PREVENT and its undue focus on religious ideology as the primary factor of political violence. A focus which has honed in “on religious interaction and Islamic symbolism to assess radicalisation”. The academics state that “ideology only becomes appealing when social, economic and political grievances give it legitimacy”.
The opposition to an ideology focussed counter-terrorism policy has come from within the counter-terror industry itself. Counter terrorism expert and former FBI Special Agent on a Joint Terrorism Task Force, Clint Watts, states that based on thirty years of history, targeting ideology “would stand little chance of success”. His view is that these ideologies are not static and change based on the context on the ground and more broadly, on emerging global issues. Therefore he opines that there is no single extremist ideology strain but rather a fluid geopolitical interpretation of the world, a similar trait of all groups engaged in political violence. His view would seem to support that of the academics, in that ideology is a by product that seeks to legitimise violence as a response to social, economic and political factors.
Furthermore in a joint article, Michael Morell, Deputy Director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013, Admiral (ret.) James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015 and Samantha Vinograd, Senior Advisor to the National Security Advisor from 2011 to 2013, provide an array of reasons for political violence, some of which would be dismissed as “grievance justification” by David Cameron. Although the article supports CVE programs, it also accepts that western nations must change their policies to not alienate Muslims and aggravate the causes which lead to political violence. Military intervention is seen as a factor as well as the lack of political change, reinforced by the western backing that many oppressive regimes in the Muslim world enjoy. They add: “One of the best ways to help Europe is for the United States to be a model of openness to Muslim immigration and of fully integrating Muslims into our society and economy — with our political leaders refraining from any rhetoric to the contrary.”
These expert opinions clearly indicate that ending the cycles of violence is a much broader struggle than simply challenging ideology “as a counterterrorism silver bullet”. Western powers must address the very real grievances which exist by shifting their attitudes towards Muslims and scaling back on their aggressive and counterproductive foreign and domestic policies.
READ OUR REPORT: WE ARE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT: THE HOME OFFICE, BREAKTHROUGH MEDIA AND THE PREVENT COUNTER NARRATIVE INDUSTRY
Dr Abdul Wahid comments on ‘A War of Keywords’ report
The basis of the report is biased because the Centre for Religion and Geopolitics is a surrogate of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation – an organization established by a man who has tried to impose his beliefs, ideology and values system on Afghanistan and Iraq by force; who established policies to indoctrinate Muslims in the UK – and who still tries to influence governments and others about his perverse beliefs about Islam and Muslims. It is impossible to take a report about Islam seriously when produced by an organisation founded by a man who holidayed with the Mubaraks of Egypt, hugged the Gaddafis of Libya and who holds court with Nursultan Nazarbayev. But worse than that, the Blair doctrine on Islam is one that has cost lives and justified the most barbaric of acts (rendition, torture, gulags, war crimes) of the past twenty years. This prejudice explains why the underlying arguments are so shallow. (We have no idea as to whether one of the co-author’s former military background plays a part in the report’s bias, anymore than his sharing a name with the political ancestor of Tony Blair – those who destabilised the Middle East during World War One).
The understanding of the issue is shallow because it persists on defaulting to the unsubstantiated ‘conveyor belt’ theory (albeit with a small caveat) attempting to link non-violent political groups that advocate alternative political ideas to those produced in the west, with violent movements. The attempts to associate Hizb ut-Tahrir with ISIS is a prime example, by saying that ‘establishing an Islamic state and a caliphate are central ideas for both groups. In theory, the only difference between Hizb ut-Tahrir and ISIS are the means of achieving these ambitions, but both advocate for an Islamic state’.
Aside from the fact that every reading of Islam – whether Sufi, Salafi or otherwise (other than distorted secular interpretations) all acknowledge the role of Islam in government as in all areas of life, and the centrality of the Caliphate in Islam, for most people the difference between using political means and violent means to achieve a goal is no small difference.
Furthermore, any serious observer of these organisations easily understands there is a world of difference between the two organisations. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political party that has been working by political and intellectual means for an Islamic system of government since 1953, whereas ISIS is an armed group who used the idea of the caliphate in its bid to outcompete rival militias in Syria. Hizb ut-Tahrir has for decades emphasised the importance of the rights of citizens in the Caliphate according to the Shari’ah – regardless of their religion and has criticised the treatment of minorities in Iraq and Syria by ISIS, the regime in Baghdad and the regime in Damascus.
To conflate ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir’s commentary on the Syrian conflict’ to the ‘worldview of ISIS’ should be so obviously wrong to any independent observer that it is generous to call it a ‘shallow’ argument, when ‘wilful misinformation’ might be a better description.
Hizb ut-Tahrir has criticised the Assad regime, regional and global powers and armed militias such as ISIS for their shedding of innocent blood in the region – whilst the other is a participant in that bloody conflict. One presents a vision of a caliphate to stablise the region – recognising the government has to rule by Islam but for all its citizens, regardless of religion or sect, while the other is an armed group that has no vision for a caliphate other than using the label.
The study is flawed because, like so many others, it defines the term ‘extremism’ to serve its pre-existing argument. In its glossary, the document uses the definition ‘the desire to impose a belief, ideology, or values system on others to the exclusion of all other views by indoctrination, force, or by seeking to control government’ – a definition so broad it surely encompasses every secular liberal person who tries to convince people of their believes or makes a bid for political office. Yet it is used in such a way that it implies ‘extremists’ are those Muslims who wish to convince others or implement systems they believe in.
Moreover, the idea that these self-selected ‘keywords’ carry some deep importance is more than a little funny. We would draw peoples’ attention to the table on page 47 that tries to categorise Islamic terminology in a meaningless way, which the authors clearly think is terribly clever. The net result is that this study is a sad waste of time and money that if taken seriously by anyone, will only serve to misguide public policy on Islam and Muslims even more.
As a result, the conclusions are laughable. The crux of the authors’ argument is that when people use search engines to look for these keywords, policy makers should ensure the rigging of search engines to promote ‘sponsor links’ carrying arguments written by the Foreign office to reinforce their counter-narrative.
Clearly, the author’s think that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s arguments that present a caliphate on the Prophetic model are not arguments that can be refuted without rigging the system in this way.
We are now more than 90 years since the demise of the last caliphate. In that time there have been many Foreign Office and State Department attempts to sponsor and present counter-arguments, alternative narratives, pseudo-Islamic rulings e.t.c., all to try to mislead Muslims from an objective reading of Islamic texts and an objective assessment of the world’s political situation. These attempts have repeatedly failed and will continue to fail. Indeed, it is not just that Muslims across the world are looking for Islamic solutions to their problems, many in the west are increasingly questioning the serial disasters of capitalism, the corruption of their political order and excesses of liberalism. It is our firm belief that any new attempts to rig the system, will do little to stem human beings in their quest to search for something different.
The matter is not about supporting or opposing the version of a Caliphate as demonstrated by ISIS but rather the criminalisation of Islamic political thought and ideology ... Charities are having their bank accounts closed without explanation ... They have had their organisation, business and bank accounts arbitrarily closed. Even their children's bank accounts have been closed.
I specialize in bitcoin platforms. I am staunchly anti-Statist. Therefore, I am utterly opposed to government-controlled fiat banking. Muslims reasoning from the Quran should even be more opposed than us, to what they could understand as pagan-controlled, interest/riba-infested fiat banking system. I really do not understand the attitude of the Muslim majority. Our very small anti-statist, libertarian constellation globally consists of only a few million people, but we are happily busy taking the entire system of fiat banking to the cleaners. We are obviously going to win this war. Nobody doubts it, not even the interest/riba-infested fiat bankers. They are now trying to adopt part of our technology (the "blockchain") in order to fend off the inevitable. At the same time, you have 1.5+ billion Muslims who are not only not doing anything about the problem ("Where is their alternative? Where are their initiatives?") but the Muslims are not even joining existing anti-riba alternatives (in large numbers) to address the very same problem. Go figure ...
format_quote Originally Posted by Junon
Some have even been imprisoned. They have been criminalised because they cared.
Ok, so the pagans imprison particular Muslims unjustly. So, where are the Virtual Associations that organize Muslims concerning this problem? All you need to do, in order to start, is to set up an internet forum just like this one, and make sure to constitute a detailed list of prisoners whom you believe that the pagans should release them. From there on, the Virtual Association can discuss counter-veiling measures that should discourage the pagans from imprisoning more Muslims, and from keeping already imprisoned Muslims in prison. There are so many ways to beef up the political and financial cost of keeping these Muslims in prison. Seriously, the list is too long to discuss in this one post. If we begin to demand the release of the existing list of such prisoners, it could certainly add substantial pressure to release them.
But then again, I usually run into Muslims who do not believe that it can be done. If they do not believe it, there is not much that I can do, because the belief that it will work is always the primary ingredient in any system that we could ever design, to make it work. In a sense, the majority of Muslims are characterized by this kind of disbelief. That is why it is so hard to get anything done. It is much easier to get something like bitcoin going and use it to compete successfully with the government-controlled interest/riba-infested banking system, because the people involved may not be believers in a traditional sense, but they do staunchly believe that they will succeed. That is why they actually are succeeding. Everybody can see that bitcoin will achieve its goal. Nobody doubts it any longer. Of course, it would be possible to set up a platform that would seek to release unjustly imprisoned Muslims. However, I would rather do it with the anti-statist, libertarian constellation than with the Muslims, because strange but true, even the most unbeliever libertarians will believe, while the Muslims will most likely again not believe. So, let me repeat: The Muslims will not believe, and therefore, they are failing. Seriously, it is their lack of belief that causes the problem, and that is something that someone like me cannot solve.
The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
Terrorism has come about in assimilationist France and also in multicultural Britain. Why is that? | Kenan Malik
Read more
That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.......
America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group
Incisive article originally published by GR in September 2014. Terror attacks or mass shootings allegedly perpetrated by the ISIS, the question that should be asked: who are the State sponsors of Al Qaeda and the ISIS? (M.Ch. GR Editor).
Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.
The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.
The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.
Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980′s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
..............
Hillary Clinton : We created Al-Qaeda
Truth Syria
Uploaded on Dec 27, 2011
In this video Hilary Clinton admits that the US government created and funded Al-Qaeda in order to fight the soviet union, and she even considers that as a good thing. But she claims that the Americans are fighting Al-Qaeda nowadays. If you really fighting Al-Qaeda, then who are the scums and terrorists you used in order to topple the government of Qaddafi in Libya… The American media describes “Aldel Hakim Belhaj” as an x-terrorist or as an x-jihadist. How funny and hypocrite!
Did his brain develop suddenly? or what are the marks that made him an x-Jihadist? There is only one reason… The American needed him, so they whitened his page and he became suddenly an x-Jihadist… Wait a couple of years to see him again an active jihadist when the Americans don’t need his services…
Al-Qaeda didn’t leave the US government bed… Let us review the history and see that Al-Qaeda acts served only the US foreign policy… Al-Qaeda terrorists are multipurpose fighters who are being used efficiently by the US government…
“Standing in a large family house in the Hurriya district of Baghdad a little boy, no more than ten years old, with huge round eyes silently points out the bullet holes in each of the bedrooms.”
Deborah Davies reports from inside Baghdad
Standing in a large family house in the Hurriya district of Baghdad a little boy, no more than ten years old, with huge round eyes silently points out the bullet holes in each of the bedrooms. He goes from room to room, pointing out the marks in the wardrobe door, in the bed-frame, in the wall – he knows where they all are. It’s the kind of knowledge no child should be burdened with.
Downstairs, six almost identical figures in black robes, sit in a row holding large pictures of their murdered men-folk, with a clutter of children on their laps.
These six women – all of them members of the same family, all of them recently widowed – have not been back into their bedrooms since last November, when a convoy of police cars drew up outside their home in the early hours and dozens of uniformed men burst in.
Another of the children, Hanin, was asleep in her parents’ bed. She’s almost matter of fact as she describes what happened next. ‘I heard a gunshot so I cuddled my Dad. They came into our room and I told them not to kill my Daddy but the man threatened to shoot me. They shot Daddy and then they shot my Uncle.’
Five men were shot dead that night – a sixth had been killed in the street three weeks earlier. Their crime? The head of the family, Sheik Khadem Sarheed, was leader of a well-known Sunni tribe. Now he’s dead, along with four of his adult sons and one son-in-law. One of the sons was a policeman and recognised the killers. ‘He told them he was a policemen like them’, says his widow, ‘But they shot him in the neck and in the stomach’.
Neighbours saw the police cars parked outside the house and recognised the uniforms of the notorious police commandos. They’re highly trained, heavily armed officers, more like soldiers than ordinary policemen. And they report directly to the Ministry of the Interior. Over the last eighteen months these commandos – who are almost exclusively Shia Muslims – have been implicated in rounding up and killing thousands of ordinary Sunni civilians.
A hundred dead bodies a day
Up to a hundred bodies a day are found dumped on waste ground and rubbish tips around Baghdad. They’ve usually been dreadfully tortured. Acid and electric drills are the favourite methods and many of the bodies are still wearing police handcuffs.
As we discovered, there is even compelling evidence that the secret prisons of Saddam’s day are back – stinking hell-holes where hundreds of victims are herded together to be raped, tortured and maimed for no crime other than belonging to the wrong sect.
And it’s all happening under the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene. These are the chilling findings of a special investigation, filmed for a Channel 4 documentary, The Death Squads that reveals how one of the most senior ministers in Iraq’s new administration stands accused of presiding over a campaign to torture, maim and execute his enemies. And this is the dossier that utterly explodes the myth that peace and a liberal democracy are blossoming in the new ‘liberated’ Iraq.
In the bloody mayhem of Baghdad it’s very difficult to untangle exactly who’s who amongst the various death squads who now rule the streets. There are organised criminal gangs, kidnapping and killing for ransom money, and there are private militia groups loyal to particular clerics or clan leaders. But there is no question that among the most efficient of the death squads are the police commandos.
As part of our investigation, we traced how these commando units have been deliberately infiltrated and taken over by one of the most militant Islamic groups, the Badr Brigade. They’re the military wing of an Iraqi political party, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. SCIRI was set up in the early 80′s in exile in Iran and its aim was always to overthrow Saddam and his Sunni government and replace them with a Shia government. Now, very helpfully, the Americans have done that for them.
Return of the Badr Brigade
Immediately after Saddam was toppled in the Spring of 2003 thousands of Badr Brigade militiamen flooded back across the border from Iran, along with their political leaders who’d spent years waiting for this moment. They wanted the new Iraq to become a pro-Iranian, Islamic country where the Shia, who are 60% of Iraq’s population, would also be the dominant political force.
They soon discovered that the best way to achieve this has been to inflitrate Iraq’s new police force – right under the eyes the American administration.
From the early days of the US occupation of Iraq, the warning signs were there. One of the most senior British police officers sent to Baghdad was the former Deputy Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, Douglas Brand. His brief was very simple – to rebuild the Iraqi police. He wanted to create a professional force dedicated to law and order. But the Americans were so keen to build up the numbers they turned a blind eye to who was enlisting. ‘They wanted to have the graduation parades, to have them in new uniforms’, Douglas Brand told us. ‘Nobody was too interested in what happened when they actually went out on the streets’.
Douglas Brand says he voiced his concerns, ‘Probably ten times a day to whoever would listen, usually two star Generals and above.’ He even spoke directly to the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ‘But I sensed the subtleties were not understood and if there were consequences down the road, that’s something the Iraqis were going to have to handle themselves’.
Those consequences became clear very quickly. In June 2004 an American soldier, Kevin Maries, was looking through his sights of his sniper rifle from his usual position on the top floor of the Ministry of the Interior building when he saw Iraqi police commandos bring hundreds of prisoners into a Ministry compound directly below him.
He took a series of astonishing photographs through his rifle sight showing what happened. ‘They were forced onto their knees, beaten with rubber hoses,’ he remembers, ‘The beatings got more severe, a metal bar was used and they were beating the soles of their feet’. When he thought some of the prisoners might die, Kevin alerted his unit and American troops turned up to stop the torture.[u] But an hour later US Headquarters ordered them to withdraw and leave the prisoners to the mercy of their captors. As far as Kevin knows, most of the prisoners were later moved to an official prison but only after they were beaten again.[/b]
US reluctance to intervene
From the start the US authorities have been reluctant to interfere and that became even more marked when a controversial appointment was made to the Iraqi government. In May 2005, a man named Bayan Jabr was made Minister of the Interior – and thus the man in charge of the police. He was one of SCIRI’s most senior figures.
Suddenly huge numbers of his own exclusively Shia militiamen from the Badr Brigade were recruited into the police. Gerry Burke witnessed that first hand. A senior Massachusetts policeman, seconded as a police adviser to Baghdad, Burke saw a memo from the new Minister authorising the recruitment of one group of 1,300 men into the Commandos without any obvious qualifications for the job. ‘These were men without any police training, without any background checks’, Gerry Burke told us, ‘It was just changing uniforms from the Badr Brigade to the police’.
A few months later, when groups of Sunni men began to be kidnapped, murdered and their bodies dumped in the same spots every day, Gerry Burke tried to organise a surveillance operation to catch the killers. But the ordinary Iraqi police officers he was working with were too terrified to co-operate. ‘They believed the perpetrators were members of the police who would have killed them in retaliation for investigating it’.
But that is by no means the only evidence that Iraq’s Minsiter for the Interior is involved in a covert campaign of terror. One Iraqi MP, accuses Mr Jabr of being behind a network of secret prisons were Sunnis were held without charge and tortured. Of course, in a land where sectarian rivalries often involve wild allegations, we should treat any such claims with caution. But even with that in mind, the evidence provided to us by a Sunni MP named Mohammed al Dini is profoundly disturbing.
Torture videos
Last summer, Al Dini was among a delegation of MPs who turned up unannounced to check one of these suspected illegal sites. He showed us the video his staff took of the inspection. Several hundred men are pictured, crammed into cells. There are chaotic scenes of jubilation as the prisoners realise outsiders have come to end their ordeal and they all clamour to tell Al Dini their stories. One man is an Imam at a mosque. ‘They forced us to talk by raping us’, he tells the MP. Eventually prisoners sit patiently on the floor while one by one they display their injuries. Some have been branded with hot metal bars or had their fingernails ripped out. They lift their shirts to show bruises, scars and burns all over their bodies.
Then Mohammed Al Dini showed us a second video. Three days after he exposed this illegal prison, a group of his relatives visited him in Baghdad. On their way home their minibus was stopped by uniformed men. They were dragged out and executed on the street. The video shows ten bodies, lying on the pavement, in large pools of blood. Yellow leaflets have been scattered round which say, ‘Congratulations to those who killed these Sunni extremists.’
Mohammed Al Dini is in no doubt about who murdered his ten cousins. ‘They were militiamen operating as death squads inside the police’, he says, ‘And the attack was ordered by those people I exposed for running the prison.’
We interviewed Al Mohammed Dini in the safety of the Green Zone but he then made an extraordinary offer – to take us to his office and give us more evidence of police atrocities which have taken place while Bayan Jabr was the Minister in charge. His office was in a district called Yarmuk – a short journey but an incredibly dangerous one.
The Green Zone
The general rule for Western journalists in Baghdad is to stay in the Green Zone – if you go anywhere else you need your own armed guards in armoured cars and you never stay anywhere for longer than ten minutes. Any foreigner venturing out runs the very real risk of being kidnapped by Sunni insurgents.
We discussed it as a team and took the advice of our calm and experienced security man, who’s ex-British army. We decided to trust Mohammed Al Dini. We all climbed into his 4 x 4, with two of his own armed guards. As we drove through last checkpoint in the Green Zone and out into Baghdad’s wild beyond a dozen more vehicles, four armed guards in each, were waiting.
They swung in to surround us. We were now in a huge convoy which included two pick-up trucks with men stood on the back manning machine guns. We drove past the Jihad district where last July the police and other armed gunman set up unofficial checkpoints. They inspected everyone’s ID cards and executed more than forty people with Sunni names.
Then we went past Yarmuk hospital, which was surrounded by police cars. Iraqi hospitals are very dangerous places. We’d spoken to doctors who told us how patients, relatives and medical staff are regularly kidnapped from the treatment rooms by hospital guards and the police. Two doctors – too frightened to meet us – sent us emails. One said ‘I’m writing to you crying with tears, they’ve gone on a wild rampage killing doctors’.
Religious fanatics killing the educated
The second email, from a woman doctor, said ‘These religious fanatics are killing the educated people so the country will be easier to be controlled.’ A third doctor, who agreed to be in interviewed anonymously, described how an elderly woman was rushed in very ill. When the hospital guards realised she was the wife of a well known Sunni man they shot her.
There was more to come. When we reached Mohammed Al Dini’s office, he handed over several CD’s full of horrific images of corpses – victims, he claimed, of the death squads. ‘Bullet holes?’ I asked pointing to a picture of two round wounds. Mohammed Al Dini corrected me. ‘No – electric drill holes’.
Then he fished out a five page document from his briefcase. It was a top secret report from Military Intelligence describing how they had caught eighteen policemen in the act of kidnapping two Sunni civilians. The police had confessed that they’d been ordered to pick up the men by their own senior officers who were members of the Badr Brigade. They were paid for each captive they handed over and they knew of at least nine men who’d later been found dead.
Mohammed Al Dini told me this all started when Bayan Jabr became Interior Minister – he was later promoted to Finance Minister, a role he continues to hold. ‘There’s a great deal of evidence against him, he’s been involved in many human rights breaches in Iraq’, he says.
Could it be true? Could one of the most senior figures in Iraq’s new administration be presiding over a regime of terror every bit as savage as that under Saddam? We wrote to Bayan Jabr to ask for his response to all these allegations – but so far he hasn’t replied.
One thing is for sure: life in ‘liberated’ modern day Iraq is every bits as terrifying as it was under Saddam – perhaps even more so. The videos that Mohammed Al Dini gave us were only part of a huge collection we built up during our time in Baghdad. Human rights organisations gave us hours and hours of material. One mass funeral after another, lines of coffins, crowds of wailing relatives.
But among the most heartbreaking tapes are ones the women in the ‘House Of Six Widows’ gave us. One shows the immediate aftermath of the killings – the Sheik and his sons covered in blood stained blankets. Another video is of the funeral.
But the third is quite different. The final video is from 2002, a year before the war began, and it shows the joyful scenes at a huge wedding of one of the sons – now murdered. The house where the Sunni family still live is in a mixed area and among the hundreds of friends and neighbours pictured dancing in the street with teh wedding party many were Shia. But since the coming of the death squads, many Sunni families have fled the area altogether. It’s a pattern of ethnic cleansing being repeated across Baghdad as the city descends into ever deeper sectarian chaos.
It’s impossible to work in Baghdad and leave with any ideas about simple solutions. Beware of anyone who offers them. The only certain thing is that tonight and every night for the foreseeable future, the death squads will be roaming the streets. And many of them will be so-called policemen
Synopsis: it has become clear at this stage that America the land at the forefront of wh0redoms and the daughter of England is run by a group of criminals fomenting corruption, sin, bloodshed and other mischief around the planet and is the principal reason for the chaos and bloodshed in the middle east and in other parts of the world.
Once the current stage of recognizing the satanic culprits and allowing them to justify the word of punishment upon themselves is complete, we shall, God willing, move into the next stage.
it is better to repent to Allah than to face His approaching swift punishment with heedlessness.
But that's a matter of choice.
Adios.
A simple re-brand of PREVENT will not take away from its toxicity
London – The Home Affairs Select Committee report into Extremism is a wasted opportunity to address the real causes of political violence and relationship with the Muslim community.
While the Select Committee recognises the failure of PREVENT, it only suggests cosmetic changes and a new name, ENGAGE, in an attempt to attract Muslim organisations to work alongside state-approved organisations named by the CAGE report, We are Completely Independent.
These groups are neither independent nor grassroots, and have little experience with government counter-terrorism measures. They are therefore unable to effectively challenge the state’s overreach within the counter-terrorism space.
Instead of actively acknowledging the urgent need to address the key issues driving political violence, the government has resorted again to the good Muslim-bad Muslim narrative, while propping up its counter-terrorism agenda.
Ibrahim Mohamoud, Communications Officer, said:
“The Select Committee is playing the blame game. A lot of emphasis in the report is centred on the need for Muslims to take ownership for terrorist acts, instead of critically assessing if the government’s counter-terrorism measures have reduced or increased the threat.”
“The Select Committee claim there have been too many counter-terrorism laws yet they welcome the proposed Counter Terrorism and Safeguarding Bill. It is hard to understand how further legislation piled onto already existing failing legislation will rectify the situation.”
“Those at the receiving end of PREVENT, as well several organisations and high profile figures have called for the PREVENT duty to be scrapped outright. A simple re-brand of a fundamentally flawed policy will do no good.”
Mixed results brothers and sisters, campaigning has forced the British government to ditch the Prevent brand. Not for long though.
PREVENT has ended, ENGAGE is its rebirth
The Home Affairs Select Committee report into radicalisation has rightly recognised the toxicity of PREVENT. Yet, instead of scrapping the failed policy, it only proposes a rebranded version of it, named ENGAGE. This programme seeks to implicate community organisations in order to gain a veneer of credibility, while the underpinning premises of PREVENT are left firmly intact.
It is an attempt to force the Muslim community to take ownership of the problem of political violence, while at the same time reinforcing the good Muslim, bad Muslim dichotomy, with the government’s overarching narrative as the determining factor. Ironically, the report refers to and quotes non-independent organisations who are state sponsored as outlined in our report “We are Completely Independent”, and gives them a semblance of legitimacy.
Underpinning flawed theories remain the same
There is no attempt to engage and seriously question the science behind counter extremism, as CAGE urged in its letter to Keith Vaz, dated 20th November 2015. ERG22+, a programme formulated with colluding psychiatrists and that underpins the entire counter-terrorism strategy, escapes scrutiny and remains a mystery.
The whole notion of identifying suspects using “radicalisation factors”, was sharply critiqued by eminent US psychologists who concluded “We do not read minds, and we know that none of us can predict the future.” The lack of acknowledgement of the opaque scientific basis behind the prevailing radicalisation theory, is a glaring omission in the report.
Despite questionable foundations, and the fact that the report recognises the problems of defining “extremism”, it proceeds to make a number of recommendations which broaden the surveillance apparatus and empower the upcoming Counter Extremism and Safeguarding Bill. This includes recommendations to considerably broaden the powers of social media and internet companies and even “smaller community organisations” to identify, monitor and take down content deemed to be “extremist”.
Certain flawed assumptions still prevail. Again, parents’ weak English language skills are equated to an inability to counter radicalisation in children, and grievances around foreign and domestic policy are said to be “perceived” as opposed to being real.
PREVENT is not addressed as a flawed policy that needs to be scrapped
The concerns surrounding PREVENT, that it securitizes a whole community and that it criminalises ordinary religious behaviour and in some cases movements for social justice, are not highlighted. They are all explained away through implementation problems like transparency, or communication lapses or due to a lack of good PREVENT training.
The report also claims there have been too many counter-terrorism laws and yet it still welcomes the new Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill, seeing further legislation as a remedy for the effects of previous legislation. This is a weak justification for unnecessary laws that have only further codified Muslim existence.
A discriminatory expectation to condemn
The report also made several comments about CAGE: “We were deeply concerned to hear CAGE’s views on not condemning terrorist acts, which we believe simply increases the sense of isolation from society that some individuals within the community feel. We also note CAGE’s sensitivity about the use of the term ‘religious fascism’.”
CAGE is deeply concerned at the Committee’s inability to move beyond political posturing. No other community, minority or majority, is forced to condemn acts of political violence in a similar fashion. This demand for selective outrage is but a manifestation of the discriminatory attitude permeating the report. Contrary to what the report asserts, this subtle, unique coercion to condition condemnation for particular acts of violence reinforces isolation of the Muslim community from society.
CAGE’s position is clear: CAGE abhors all forms of violence against civilians, and we adopt a policy of fairness that relies on the assumption that all human life is equal.”
In short, the report is a “rebrand and tweak” effort, which effectively revisits the first version of the Prevent strategy under Labour, while maintaining the problematic underlying counter-extremism theory.
Early Day Motion calling to “scrap the Prevent strategy in its entirety” a welcome contrast to efforts to rebrand the discredited policy
London – An Early Day Motion was proposed by Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael this morning calling to “scrap the Prevent strategy in its entirety”, saying the “strategy is no longer fit for purpose”. CAGE is pleased to see this serious call to abolish PREVENT being brought to parliament, contrary to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s recommendation to ‘rebrand’ it.
CAGE began the public call for PREVENT to be scrapped with a letter published in the Independent and signed by over 300 academics and civil society members. This call has gathered support from across many sectors, including the targeted communities, and now in part from prominent MPs.
Ibrahim Mohamoud, spokesperson for CAGE, said:
“Mr Carmichael’s motion calling for a debate should be welcomed by all. PREVENT has been criticised for lack of transparency and its potential to impact free speech and discussion, from many sectors. Since 2011, CAGE has been consistently cautioning against the overreach of PREVENT. There’s no place for PREVENT, or any of its manifestation in a fair and open society.”
“There should be no attempt to pressure the most impacted communities into bearing the responsibility of solving a very serious problem, which they have not created. In order to continue playing its positive role in society, the Muslim community, like any other, must be able to retain its integrity.”
“What is needed, more than anything else, is for decision-makers to reflect and acknowledge the negative impact of some policies, at home and abroad, on national security.”
Another update. Terrorism is not terrorism when the 'good guys' do it.
Britain and Libya: The legacy of unaccountability continues
The Foreign Affairs Committee’s report into Libya was damning in its criticism of David Cameron, outlining that the rise of IS was a consequence of the former prime minister’s “failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.” But while the report outlines a number of failings, there is no serious accountability for the aftermath of the intervention.
When seen in the light of Britain’s approach to members of Libya’s opposition, and its continued lack of accountability in its treatment of these individuals, Britain’s recent military incursion takes on a more sinister light. The relationship between the British government and Libya has of course been one of political expediency and has for some time undermined Libyan attempts to alter their own political situation.
In 2004, British prime minister Tony Blair struck a deal with Colonel Qaddafi, despite his oppression of his people, in the name of co-operating in the war on terror. As part of the ‘Deal in the Desert’ Britain was to begin courting favour with Qaddafi by honing in on dissidents. That same year, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, members of the Libyan opposition, were kidnapped, rendered and transferred back to Libya where they were tortured.
Belhaj’s wife Fatima Bouchar was also abducted and flown by the CIA to Tripoli. Saadi’s wife and four children – the youngest being a six-year-old girl – were also rendered and imprisoned. Recent efforts to hold former foreign secretary Jack Straw accountable for their torture, have been unsuccessful – a situation that surely continues to taint British relations with Libyan people.
One year later, in 2005, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of Qaddafi, was banned as a terrorist organisation in Britain, and five Libyan dissidents were arrested, detained on control orders and threatened with deportation to Libya where they would have certainly faced torture. David Davis MP, said that the use of control orders against these men seemed to be “a way of appeasing Gaddafi by handicapping his opponents”. These men fought and won against their detention and deportation, but were confined to their homes under control orders, or house arrest.
One of the men subjected to this ordeal, Abdul Baset Azzouz, described these restrictive orders as having “excommunicated me and my family from the entire community.” The use of secret evidence against them was especially frustrating and a breach of the fundamental right to free trial.
“SIAC plays games with Muslims. They are using secret evidence – they have made this law just for Muslims. They said that we have contact with terrorists such as the Libyan Fighting Group who are supposed to have Al Qaeda ideology. When I asked where the evidence for this is, all I was told was that it was secret,” said Azzouz.
The basis for deporting these men was a memorandum of understanding outlining that these men would not be tortured and would be given a fair a trial. Faraj Hassan, who sadly passed away in 2010 soon after his restrictions were lifted said of the MOU: “It makes a mockery of the so-called civilised democracy and human rights the UK professes to uphold and uses as an excuse to invade countries like Iraq and Afghanistan claiming to be bringing democracy and human rights to these countries and removing dictatorship, when the UK itself deals with these very dictators as and when it suits it.”
Faraj rightly pointed that the behaviour of the British government only breeds resentment: “The double standards and the blatant hypocrisy of the UK government towards countries which torture is clear for everyone to see and the UK government wonders why Muslims feel angry?”
It remains to be seen whether this culture of impunity for this duplicitous British involvement in Libyan affairs will continue – for if it does, the situation will not improve. The recent parliamentary report is more proof that the British policy has changed from pro-Qaddafi to anti-Qaddafi in the name of protecting its own interests and at the expense of ordinary Libyans.
What is also clear in the report, is that regime change is often sold to the public in the name of protecting civilians. However, in time the real aim becomes clear: to instal a government friendly to the British counter-terrorism agenda, while local military despots and their complicit British security men and leaders continue to remain unaccountable for the abuses notched up in the process.
Leading academics question ‘science’ that underpins PREVENT strategy
London – A joint statement signed by 150 academics and psychologists including Professors Noam Chomsky and Marc Sageman, poses important questions about the ‘scientific’ studies underpinning the government’s controversial PREVENT policy.
This is the first time the ‘science’ behind the government’s radicalisation theory has been identified and with its revelation it has been called into question by professionals in the field because it was not subject to proper scientific scrutiny or public critique.
The Extremism Risk Guidance 22+ (ERG22+) framework is being used to assess the risk of ‘radicalisation’ and influence referrals to the CHANNEL programme.
More than 500,000 public servants have been placed under duty to implement it. We know of 34 cases where children have been either removed, or threatened to be removed from their families based on this flawed assessment tool.
The joint statement follows a report The ‘Science’ of Pre-Crime by CAGE, which provides the only critique of the ERG22+, based on a journal article published by two former psychologists employed at the UK Nationals Offenders Management Service (NOMS). The actual scientific study is classified.
The report finds the following:
• The study’s conclusions have been implemented far beyond the original intention.
• A process that should have only ever been used by experts in a limited circumstance has been opened up to the entire public sector.
• Political context was omitted as a specific factor, despite the authors having been recommended not to leave it out.
CAGE spokesperson Ibrahim Mohamoud said:
“Even the authors of the study recognise that the ERG22+ cannot be used as a predictive tool, but in the hands of the Home Office, the study, which took as its subjects prisoners convicted of terrorism charges, has been extended to predict the behaviour of individuals beyond a prison environment. Now, more than ever, PREVENT as a policy needs to be scrapped.”
“Their claim in 2015 that the ERG22+ is still a, “work in progress”, is extremely disconcerting as the tool has real world consequences. Not only have children been removed from their families, but legal judgements have been made based on the ERG22+.”
“The fact that the government saw it fit to place on a statutory footing, a tool that has not been subject to sufficient scientific scrutiny, should be of grave concern not only to the psychology profession itself, but to the communities it targets, and the individuals who have subjected to being ‘lab rats’ in the government’s broader counter terrorism agenda.”
Sara Khan’s The Battle for British Islam: A 250 page Prevent press release
Sara Khan’s new book The Battle for British Islam is basically a 250 page press release for the government’s discredited Prevent counter-extremism strategy, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih.
Badly stung by the unwillingness of many British Muslims to simply lie down and surrender, the prominent “counter extremism campaigner” takes aim at virtually every grassroots mainstream Muslim organization out there for refusing to take the state’s medicine.
She lambasts those anti-Prevent activists on the Left who obviously aren’t obsessed enough about such crucial issues to the British nation such as stoning adulterers to death and segregating men and women at public events.
And she bigs up those brave, misunderstood souls, such as herself, who are selflessly trying to get everyone to love each other (while simultaneously pocketing taxpayers’ cash).
By the end of the book I could almost hear her thinking: “If only those damn, pesky Islamists wouldn’t be so obsessed by their religion, would stop complaining about Islamophobia and would close their eyes when Britain bombs a Muslim country, I wouldn’t have to let a counter-terrorism officer write a book and then put my own name on it.” (Only joking, I’m sure MI5 and the Home Office had absolutely nothing to do with her potential Pulitzer Prize winner).
Salafis and Islamists
The basic argument of The Battle for British Islam is that Salafis and non-Salafi Islamists have hijacked the religion of Islam by politicising it and have harmed our ability to keep society safe, aided and abetted by “useful idiots” on The Left.
Khan says the rise of puritanical thought and Islamist ideology has become almost unstoppable.
“Ever since I was a teenager,” she writes. “I have witnessed how Islamist extremism has wreaked havoc on the lives of British Muslims. In my work over the past eight years as co-founder and director of Inspire, a counter extremism organisation, I have seen at first hand how this ideology has ripped families apart, turning daughters against mothers and sons against fathers. It has robbed kids of their childhood and their promising futures, and has even groomed teenagers to be killers.
“It has encouraged intolerance and the dehumanisation of both non Muslims and other Muslims, furthering sectarianism, acts of excommunication and even violence. Islamist extremism provokes anti-Muslim hatred and creates polarised communities; yet despite the damage it causes it continues to thrive among some Muslims in the UK.”
The good guys are those pro-Prevent tolerant, secular, Union Jack-waving Muslims who aren’t too hung up by what the Quran and Hadith actually say, but who live in a happy-clappy live-and-let-live universe. So that means institutions like Faith Matters, Islamic Society of Britain, British Muslims for Secular Democracy and Quilliam, and individuals like Fiyaz Mughal, Usama Hasan, Abu Muntasir and Tehmina Kazi.
On the other hand, the bad guys are the anti-Prevent, anti-Britain, pro-Caliphate, anti homosexual, pro-stoning to death Islamists like CAGE and Moazzam Begg, Hizb ut-Tahrir, The Muslim Council of Britain, Islam 21C and Haitham al Haddad, The Islamic Human Rights Commission, FOSIS, IERA, MEND, Prevent Watch, Students Not Suspects and, yes, 5Pillars.
And these bad guys are being bolstered by institutions such as the National Union of Students and the University College Union who have clearly been hoodwinked by a bunch of devious extremists.
Khan argues that the Salafis and the non-Salafi Islamists used to be divided before 9/11 but have since united to achieve common goals, such as fighting Prevent and spreading groundless scare stories about it. And it’s because of them that Prevent is so misunderstood.
According to her, Prevent is just about stopping individuals from being drawn into terrorism in the interests of national security. It’s about helping vulnerable young people before they enter the Criminal Justice System, especially in schools, and any mistakes that have been made can be remedied by better training and better communication.
In short, the government is targeting Islamic extremism, not Islam itself.
But there is hope! The way to beat the Salafis and the Islamists, she says, is not by banning them because that would be illiberal. No, it’s by empowering women and taking on extremist theological narratives. In other words, by forming a wide societal coalition to take on the Salafi-Islamists.
Good luck!
Prevent is the problem
I suppose I should begin my dissection of the book by tackling the central argument – that Salafis and Islamists have discredited Prevent and that they are lying about what it is.
Everyone should be aware that Prevent is opposed by a wide cross-section of Muslims, many of whom are not Salafi and many of whom are not Islamist. Moreover, they often disagree with each other about theology and politics and some of them are even very secular. But they all object to Muslims as a community being vilified by our government and media and being profiled and monitored in a way that other communities are not. They also resent being labelled as a “problem community” and being blamed for radicalisation and extremism.
The problems with Prevent and general counter terrorism policy are not “perceived,” they are real. From the stopping-and-searching of random Muslims at airports, to the monitoring and spying on the community, to aggressive policing and entrapment tactics, to the recruitment of agents, to the harassment of kids in schools and students at universities. And believe me I could go on.
The net effect of all this is that Muslims feel targeted, stigmatised and paranoid. And they feel they’re not being engaged by the authorities or being listened to by the powers-that-be.
All this is happening, of course, while foreign policy grievances (which are only addressed in a cursory way in Khan’s book) are being completely ignored or downplayed, and while state and media Islamophobia remain unaddressed.
And an increasingly broad cross-section of non-Muslims, especially in public institutions, can also see Prevent for what it is – nothing less than state Islamophobia and a massive spying and monitoring exercise on one particular community.
Is Sara Khan a victim?
Throughout the book Khan portrays herself as a victim and says she has suffered abuse for her views. She seems particularly upset at being called a “House Muslim” and a “native informant” by some on social media.
She writes: “‘House Muslim’ is derived from the Black Power and anti slavery movement in the United States. To get an idea of how offensive it is to British Muslims working in collaboration with Government to prevent radicalisation, one should listen to Malcolm X’s use of it. The ‘house negro’ in his terminology was a slave who loved his master more than his master loved himself, talked like his master, ate like his master and enforced his laws against the slaves in the fields.”
My only comment on that is “hmmm…”
She continues: “Those Muslims who believe in engaging fully with British society, supporting gender equality and human rights, condemning violence in the name of religion, promoting inter faith dialogue and standing against all forms of sectarianism within Islam, find themselves a beleaguered group these days. No insult is out of bounds in the bully pulpit of social media. Even violence and threats towards their person seem to be regarded as an acceptable form of discourse. But they soldier on, providing valuable community services to our country, such as youth leadership courses and hate-crime monitoring, as well as rebutting the arguments of Islamist ideology. They often pursue this work with the minimal financial and moral support.”
But is Khan really a victim? The fact is that anyone in the public eye is going to get abused if they have strong opinions. I am racially and Islamophobically abused all the time; it’s certainly not nice and if violence is threatened that is completely unacceptable, but I must admit that I find it difficult to feel sorry for her when nothing of any significance has actually happened to her.
I really don’t see Khan as a victim. She has the support of government and mainstream media even though her credentials to talk about Islam and counter terrorism are at the very least debatable.
These institutions are far more powerful than what the anti-Prevent people have behind their campaign, which is basically grassroots-funded and manned by dedicated volunteers.
It is the anti-Prevent brigade that is regularly demonised by mass market newspapers and by government officials; it is we who are weak and the likes of Sara Khan who are strong.
That said, Khan is entitled to her opinion of course, but it is essential to understand that it is an unrepresentative opinion within the British Muslim community itself and one that has been artificially amplified by government finances and mainstream media support.
Why should Sara Khan, someone without theological credentials, be given a platform to “save her faith”? And why should she have the last word on counter-extremism when there are far more qualified people to pronounce a verdict on it?
Government links
But perhaps it isn’t so surprising that Khan defends Prevent so vehemently because, after all, she works for it, as she herself explicitly admits, perhaps for the first time in such a detailed manner.
“I believe that, in order to combat radicalisation, partnership work is vital, whether with statutory agencies, police or Government. Civil society groups have a unique and important role to play in reaching communities, working directly with those who have been radicalised, their families or local networks, and governments have a duty to work with and support such organisations.
“In this spirit, Inspire, the organisation that I run, has engaged with women to protect families from extremism, through its #makingastand campaign. Our anti ISIS work has been achieved with the support of Prevent. Recognising the value of #makingastand, the Home Office helped fund our campaign to deliver its message to nine cities across Britain. It also provided technical assistance for Inspire’s social media videos – short films of young Muslims dissuading other young Muslims from traveling to Syria, and highlighting the brutality of ISIS.”
The book is also co-written by Tony McMahon, a consultant working with Breakthrough Media which has orchestrated a secret propaganda programme in collaboration with the Home Office. The book itself describes McMahon as an “independent consultant working with the UK Government and civil society groups on counter extremism projects.”
Of course in an ideal world there should be no problem with British Muslim institutions taking government money to fund their projects; but in the current environment when many Muslims believe that the government is waging a war on Islam and Muslims at home and abroad, any connection with government is absolutely toxic.
A must-read for anti Prevent activists
Unfortunately many non-Muslims who don’t have a good grasp on Islamic theology or counter terrorism and radicalisation issues will be fooled by Khan’s book. And some naive Muslims may be as well.
So I want to make something clear: the vast majority of anti-Prevent people care about a cohesive British society just as much as Sara Khan does. Most of us are born and bred in this country, pay our taxes, obey the law and help old grannies cross the road. We want to live with our neighbours in peace and harmony and also want to address the radicalisation of a small number of British Muslims and the terrorism threat that does exist in this country.
But we know that the way to address these issues is not by bombing Muslim countries with impunity, or allowing the mainstream media to demonise Muslims, or monitoring and targeting the community as a whole. Rather, it is by holistically addressing issues such as British foreign policy and state and media Islamophobia, having a much more targeted counter terrorism policy, and by working with grassroots members of the Muslim community to root out the extremists rather than people like Sara Khan who have no ability to reach them.
So in conclusion I would recommend that every anti-Prevent activist reads Sara Khan’s book because they, like myself, will surely consider it the most detailed defence of Prevent so far by the British authorities, who are the real power behind Khan.
And they, like Khan, are hopping mad with the success of the anti-Prevent campaign which has made the brand completely toxic. And all they can do now is label us as “extremists” by focussing on what some of us might believe about certain aspects of Islamic law which has absolutely no relevance to Muslims in Britain or British society in general (Khan seems more obsessed by stoning to death, the caliphate and hudood punishments than ISIS does!).
They are clearly rattled and they are clearly losing. They have no support within the Muslim community whereas we have loads. And they are losing the argument in the wider community as well. So we should all read this book cover-to-cover and use it as inspiration to continue the fight.
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