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
This is a critical assessment on a worrying narrative with attempts to manipulate Muslims and others into agreeing with moral stances which go against Islam. The focus here is on homosexual sex and its permissibility/morality.
Very perceptive take on the LGBT agenda from David Icke (of all people!)l
The end goal? Paranoid? We will see.
Comic Book Guy
1 week ago
The transgender agenda is just part of larger social deconstruction agenda.
They want us as genderless, family-less, raceless, nationless, religionless, mindless worker units
Comic Book Guy
1 week ago
Yeah, because it’s not like all western governments have, for the past 60 years, supported anything and everything which undermines social bonds and social identities. The people’s social bonds and social identities were/are obstacles to government’s total control of and use of the people.
Another update. Shows how sophisticated UK government subversion campaign is against those who go against the narrative. Long article heres a short summary.
It is no longer fronted by the likes of @QuilliamOrg only, who are widely rejected by Muslims. It’s now organisations like
@Imam
sOnline and
@faith
Associates that have become the new ‘tools’ of the British State to pacify, isolate and censor Muslim agency & dissenting views.
This article should be read & shared widely within Muslim communities. When the likes of
@Imam
sOnline &
@faith
Associates turn up to our mosques, towns & cities — know that they’re coming to fulfil a specific @ukhomeoffice funded/sanctioned/orchestrated agenda — account them.
“Love”, “mercy”, “compassion”, “tolerance”, “we love you”, "we are proud Britons", “Islam is peace”, “we stand together against hate”, open condemnation statements, giving out roses, cakes & pakoras to non-Muslims in town/city centres, interfaith vigils with pro-Israeli groups...
ALL falls into how the British establishment *WANTS* Muslim communities to respond in the wake of domestic & foreign terror attacks, because it can control these responses whilst using it to isolate and silence those who ask the *IMPORTANT* questions:
causes and contributors to violence, foreign policy, domestic CVE policies, involvement and failures of the secret services, policy of collective guilt and condemnation, media double standards etc.
So next time you engage in the above activities in the wake of terror attacks, and that is *ALL* you're going to do as part of your dawah and activism — know that you're actually contributing to the pacification and weakening of the Muslim community.
Orchestrating and controlling public narratives away from asking the real questions in the wake of attacks.
When Imām Abdullah Patel questioned the five candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party about the structural racism and Islamaphobic rhetoric faced by the Muslim community, there were many outcomes that could have occurred. front runner and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson could have reached out to the Muslim community and apologised for his offensive rants comparing Muslim women to bank robbers and letterboxes. The former Secretary of State for Education and Justice, Michael Gove, could have apologised for the Trojan Hoax fiasco in Birmingham. The current Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, could have apologised for his support for anti-Muslim tweets by Donald Trump. Home Secretary Sajid Javid could have apologised for ethnic slurs stereotyping “Asian paedophiles”. [1]
Instead, what occurred was the most cynical attack on the principle that underpins all free and fair societies – accountability of politicians to the people. Imām Abdullah Patel has been attacked and vilified for no other reason than he dared to ask the future Prime Minister of this country to comment on whether “words had consequences”. [2] Their response was pathetic, and it demonstrated the reality which was implied in the question – that the Tory Party has a problem with anti-Muslim hatred.
So, less than 24 hours after the BBC debate had ended, the consequences for Imām Abdullah Patel have been devastating: he has been suspended as Imām by Masjid e Umar in Gloucester and also been suspended as Deputy Head at Al-Ashraf Primary School, both pending investigations. The message to the Muslim community is clear and unequivocal: do not dare raise your head above the parapet and question the privileged ruling elite about anti-Muslim hatred.
It is interesting to observe the mechanisms by which Imām Abdullah Patel was targeted. An inactive twitter account attributed to him had been scoured to find ‘controversial’ tweets that criticise ‘Israel’, and caution women against putting themselves at risk of assault. To be more specific, his twitter feed was used to share a graphic of ‘Israel’ superimposed on a map of the US with the title, “Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict – relocate Israel into United States”. No mention of hatred of Jews or their religion. No disparaging caricatures of Jewish people. Just good old-fashioned political satire criticising ‘Israel’s’ illegal occupation and the US’s unqualified support. If this alone is sufficient to get Imām Abdullah Patel suspended, pending an investigation, then one would expect calls for imminent anti-Zionist Jewish academics such as Noam Chomsky, Professor Ilan Pappe, and the 240 or so ‘Israeli’, Jewish academics [3] that peacefully challenge the ‘Israeli’ occupation to be suspended as anti-Semitic Jews??
The Imām’s advice to women, in summary, is: ‘do not be alone with a man’. This is the orthodox position held by Sunni schools of thought; namely, that it is prohibited for an adult man and woman, who are not related, to intentionally put themselves in a position of seclusion. It is the same position adopted and propagated by Masjid e Umar and Al-Ashraf Primary School and it is the same advice given to trainee teachers in mainstream schools to guard against false allegations by students.
Now, just take a step back to a few hours before Imām Abdullah Patel became the centre of this story. All of the Tory candidates had struggled pathetically to give a meaningful response to the question of structural racism and Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson said his great-grandfather was a Muslim, Jeremy Hunt said his three children were half Chinese, Michael Gove flipped the question into a cheap shot against Jeremy Corbyn, Rory Stewart said “al-Salāmu ʿalaikum”, and Sajid Javed made a vague reference to an external enquiry. No concrete actions. No policy decisions. Not even an acknowledgement that there is a problem. This is the reality of the future Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, and this is also the reality of how a valid and meaningful debate into anti-Muslim hatred in public life was derailed by the far-right press. It is incredible that a modest Imām can be suspended from all his public duties for tweets deemed by the far-right media as ‘controversial’, while an entire panel of prospective prime ministers can simply dismiss any questions about their own anti-Muslim bigotry.
And what of our own institutions? Our mosques? Our schools? Our charities? The purpose of having these institutions is to safeguard the interests of Islām and the Muslim in the UK and ensure the Muslim community is represented in public life. These institutions are supposed to help strengthen the identity of future generations of young Muslims and support our up and coming leaders. What message does the suspension pending investigation give to any young Muslim who wants to speak out against social injustice? What message does it give to other institutions in civic society if our own Muslim institutions are unwilling to stand up to intimidation and bullying of Muslim community leaders?
Bradford Literature Festival withdrawals: Prioritising principles over promotion
Within the past day, a number of scheduled participants for the Bradford Literature Festival have announced their withdrawal from the event, on account of the Festival’s acceptance of counter-extremism funding.
These participants include poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, organiser Sahar Al Faifi, ex-NUS President Malia Bouattia, activist Lola Olufemi, authors Waithera Sebatindira and Hussein Kesvani, 5 Pillars deputy editor Dilly Hussain – and all should be rightfully applauded for their principled stances.
The Bradford Literature Festival had accepted funding from the Building a Stronger Britain Together (BSBT) fund, which comes under the 2015 Counter Extremism Strategy.
The list of fundees of the BSBT strategy is publicly available on the Home Office website, and spans Muslim organisations as well as sports teams, cultural organisations, social enterprises and supposedly ‘antiracist’ groups such as Hope not Hate, Faith Matters and Show Racism the Red Card.
The Counter Extremism Strategy forms one pole of the new tripartite system of British counter-extremism that has been introduced in the last few years, worth revisiting if only to understand just how overarching the effort is to shepherd dissenting beliefs, and shape civil society on the whole.
What once came broadly under the remit of the PREVENT strand of CONTEST alone has now expanded – with PREVENT joined by the Counter Extremist Strategy and the Integration strategy. All of them deal with various ‘strains’ of extremism in interlocking ways.
The Counter Extremism Strategy, launched following (and in many ways directly influenced by) the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair in Birmingham schools, addresses the apparently extremism-related issues of ‘entryism’ within schools, charities and universities, ‘hate crime’, Sharia arbitration councils, and FGM.
As mentioned in our CCE Exposed report released this year
“The Counter Extremism Strategy operates alongside and in parallel to the PREVENT strategy. Effectively it takes the framework of ‘countering extremism’ as developed under PREVENT and spreads it deeper within society.”
Programmes like BSBT in many ways operate like a subsidiary of PREVENT, broadly unburdened by the toxicity of direct association with the programme. This then frees up PREVENT’s resources to broaden its range of targets through processes honed after experimenting on Muslim communities for over a decade.
Given this, it would technically be incorrect to label BSBT as PREVENT, as such – but it would be equally obtuse to pretend that it wasn’t intimately connected to the very same architecture of counter-extremism – especially considering that ‘extremism’ is defined through PREVENT.
The question of direct association with PREVENT or not, creates a mystification that PREVENT advocates have readily seized upon.
The fact remains that the counter-extremism industry on the whole has been deeply damaging to the Muslim community, it has securitised society on the whole – and there is no way of pretending, in 2019, that we can ‘do good’ through a fundamentally bad system.
The introduction of funding streams like the BSBT is both a throwback to the Labour-style version of PREVENT, whilst simultaneously representing a progression for the counter-extremism apparatus.
This is because the Strategy draws in more behaviours and social issues within the purview of ‘extremism’. It also creates a culture of dependency on counter-extremism within civil society, in an age of austerity and the retraction of social welfare.
The has reached such a point that even the very communities facing the sharp end of counter-extremism must turn to these organisations since they are establishing themselves as the only option available when it comes to funding and support.
This attempt to normalise and expand counter-extremism must be opposed – and steps like boycotting groups that take such funding can be important tactics in the short term.
However that also necessitates a broader, political, struggle: both against the logic that any and all social issues should be dealt with through the prism of counter-extremism, and towards the restoration of public funding explicitly decoupled from counter-extremism.
We must both stem the tide of counter-extremism, and push to ensure that the transition out of austerity economics doesn’t see the current trickle of counter-extremism funding turn into a flood.
I refused to work with MI5 and now I can’t see my daughter
“I told them I was feeling intimidated. They continued to suggest I should work with them, that they could help with my training, money and employment. I refused.”
In this installment of the Human Voices of the War on Terror, we share the story of a man who tells of how his life was made intolerable after the security services crossed his path. We have deliberately omitted the name of the person to protect his privacy.
I was born in the Koyama Island in Somalia. My early years were marked by fleeing my homeland to neighbouring Kenya as the civil war engulfed the country. My family later returned, only to then leave Somalia due to the continued unrest and economic instability. We moved to Yemen where for a short period of time before I made the decision to seek a better life elsewhere.
I traveled to the UK, arriving at Dover aged only 17 in the summer of 2003. I subsequently claimed asylum, and it was granted to me the following year. I enrolled in English language and Maths courses to improve my prospects and I managed to secure employment for myself in warehouses and catering.
I was a very active young man, travelling to different areas of the UK, meeting new people and wishing to contribute to society. In 2008, I traveled to Kenya to get married and meet my family. I was blessed with a daughter who is now eight years old.
In the year preceding my marriage I grew closer to my faith as a result of a number of difficult circumstances I was going through. I found solace in adhering closely to Islam. I would begin to frequent different mosques and socialise more with members of the community, from all walks of life.
I crossed the paths of many people, some I would learn later travelled abroad to take part in the conflict in Somalia. My acquaintance with them was fairly limited. I knew them from the mosque I would occasionally pray at and from a regular football session that was open for all.
At that point in time I was unaware that this would be the reason I would become a person of interest for the security services. It was only in 2009/2010 when I began the process of applying for British citizenship that I noticed a strange pattern arise. At this point I was suffering from depression for a few years. The delay in the Home Office’s response to my application had an adverse effect on my mental health. So when I received a response rejecting my application on grounds of ‘bad character’ I was devastated. I had no criminal record and the lack of explanation in the reply was perplexing.
Shortly after this refusal I received a phone call from a man who introduced himself as ‘George’ from ‘an agency that helps people with passport issues’. We arranged a meeting at a London hotel where I assumed they would help my citizenship application.
On the arranged day I entered the hotel and after a short wait a slim, tall white man approached me and identified himself as ‘George’ from the phone call. I was escorted into a room with a large round table filled with snacks. He offered me tea and coffee while another man with Mediterranean features was already seated in the room. I found this setting more strange and unsettling when they apologised and said they were from MI5 and that their job was ‘to protect people in the UK’.
“You know people we are interested in,” George said. He then mentioned their names.
I admitted I knew these people, but I was feeling anxious and fearful for my safety, so I requested a lawyer.
“Trust me – we can do anything, we can help you with your passport and bring your daughter over to the UK,” he said.
I told them I was feeling intimidated. They continued to suggest I should work with them, that they could help with my training, money and employment. I refused.
George handed me £100 for ‘my fare’.
I left the room extremely scared and shocked. I was sweating profusely. The following day at 10am I received a phone call from them asking me to meet again. I quickly directed them to my solicitor. They no longer contacted me anymore, which was good but that would be the start of my troubles.
The police raided me twice, at two separate addresses. These raids are extremely disruptive and caused great pain and anxiety. After one particular raid I was taken to Paddington Green police station, where I was held for four days.
During this arrest, I informed the police that I was claustrophobic, this was ignored. I soon had a panic attack and fainted in the cell. Despite being released with no charge, these experiences, mentally, set me on a downward cycle.
The last time I left the UK was in 2012 to Mekkah in Saudi Arabia. I performed the Umrah rituals and ended up befriending a man there. On my return to the UK I maintained friendship with this man until suddenly he stopped responding. I later learned that he was approached by the Saudi authorities, which I believe were under instruction by the MI5 and they warned him against communicating with me.
During this time my situation deteriorated. My extended family in Kenya also noticed a change. Whenever they would travel the authorities would ask them about me.
I am now too fearful to return to Kenya. My daughter lives in the UAE and they do not accept travel documents, so I have been unable to see her. My life was perfectly normal until MI5 showed up. I now suffer from lengthy depression and see mental health practitioners to help me overcome the emotional distress I experience.
I tried to apply for citizenship again in 2013 but I’ve yet to receive a response due to ‘additional checks’. What raised my suspicions that this delay was not due to normal administrative reasons, was the length of time it took to reply: 3 years despite repeated letters from my lawyers to the Home Office. Also during this period of time I successfully applied for a Security Industry Authority (SIA) security badge, and was found fit and proper to work as a security operative. I found it confusing how the SIA, which reports directly to the Home Secretary, found me fit to guard sensitive institutions and buildings, yet I did not even receive a reply for my citizenship application due to ‘additional checks’.
MI5 should stop destroying people lives. I’ve never had issues here or abroad. I feel my life is on hold. I truly feel that their intervention in my life was the beginning of all my problems.
I could not speak to anyone about my experiences because no-one had the experience and knowledge to help me. It was at CAGE that I found help and a way to bring about some legal redress to my situation.
I strongly believe that the way in which the security services seek to recruit young Muslims is counterproductive. In one hand you are given then opportunity to join them voluntarily, but if you refuse, they will make your life difficult. This approach fuels resentment and unfortunately pushes people to their very edge. I hope they reconsider their tactics and change their policies when it comes to the Muslim community.
The UK has an Islamophobia problem. With attacks on Muslims and their community spaces increasing, a ruling party with an institutional Islamophobia problem and a state-wide "counter-terror programme" that actually targets ordinary Muslims, the problem is only getting worse.
Maz Saleem’s father was killed by a white neo-Nazi terrorist when he was walking home from his local Mosque in Birmingham in 2013. She takes redfish on a journey across the UK to speak to Muslims who are too often spoken about but not listened to.
Iqra Primary School in Clapham holds pro Prevent meeting
A Muslim primary school in South London has hosted an event which provided a platform for proponents of the government’s controversial Prevent strategy, including a speaker who previously worked at the “Islamophobic” think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
Iqra Primary School in Clapham held the event last night which they promoted as a “Community Question Time on Prevent/Islamophobia.” The meeting, which was organised by Faiths Together in Lambeth, was open to parents, carers and community members. Around 40 people attended.
The school’s headteacher, Humaira Saleem, hosted the event but all the speakers were representatives from the controversial state-run Prevent programme which has been accused of demonising Muslims and gagging freedom of speech.
Mrs Saleem did not promote the Prevent strategy herself but rather introduced the speakers and asked several questions in the hopes of “raising the community’s concerns” about Prevent. In her opening speech, she said that the purpose of the event was to “open a channel of dialogue” because it is “not good to talk about issues that upset us if we do nothing about it.”
However, Iqra Primary School clearly endorses Prevent on its website, even offering links to promotional Prevent literature.
Rupert Sutton
One of the keynote speakers was Rupert Sutton, a former fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a right-wing think tank that has itself been accused of Islamophobia. He is now Prevent Programme Manager for Lambeth Council.
Sutton said: “Thanks to the headteacher for helping us organise this event, and allowing us to come in here and speak to people has been so useful in supporting the work that we do.
“For me one of the key things that has come out is this idea of how do we find out more about what’s being done to challenge Islamophobia? And how do we make that the central issue in Lambeth? So I just wanted to quickly say following the work we have conducted over the last year or so, Lydia, my Prevent Education Officer, and I were able to feed our findings into our planning for this year.”
He continued: “So our projects in schools this year very much focus on challenging stereotyping, understanding the media’s use of fake news and understanding what to do if you see information that is correct.”
Sutton also said work would continue in the area with a focus on young children.
“We are going to be doing further projects in this borough which aim to identify the similarities between gang recruitment and terror recruitment to give the people an idea that actually these are the same type of vulnerable young people that are being targeted.”
The Prevent Strategy is part of the government’s official counter-terrorism strategy, which it claims is working to stop citizens from becoming radicalised and supporting terrorism. It is statutory for schools to implement it and for teachers to look out for the “signs of radicalisation” in students. But many Muslim organisations, as well as non-Muslim academics, professionals and human rights campaigners, say Prevent unfairly targets the Muslim community.
In particular, they claim that Prevent has had a chilling effect on freedom of speech in schools and universities where Muslim students feel intimidated about speaking about certain political or societal issues for fear of being reported to a counter terrorism officer. The National Union of Teachers has also condemned Prevent, with delegates to its conferences saying it has turned teachers into spies monitoring students.
During the meeting Sutton was challenged about his past, and specifically accusations about his working relationship with Douglas Murray who is regularly accused of Islamophobia. Sutton made it clear that he no longer works as a research fellow for the HJS but did acknowledge that they have been accused of Islamophobia.
“I mean, (yes) it has,” said Sutton. “But it did also host an event today on how British Muslim women can better access support for the workplace and society.”
When challenged further about his reputation and that of his former colleague Douglas Murray, Sutton added: “I don’t work for Murray any more. We worked for the same organisation, but that doesn’t mean we share all the same views.”
One of the founders of the HJS, Matthew Jamison, has said it is “a far-right, deeply anti-Muslim racist organisation … utilized as a propaganda outfit to smear other cultures, religions and ethnic groups”.
Its Associate Director Douglas Murray has said that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board;” “all immigration from Muslim countries should be stopped;” and “the attitude towards Muslim schools should be exceptional… if any Muslim academies are allowed to exist, they should be funded entirely privately, with no taxpayer assistance and should be subject to uniquely strict regulation and inspection. If such conditions are considered unbearable, then Muslims will have to try their luck in other countries.”
Prevent and Islamophobia
The event, which lasted just over two and a half hours, began with back-to-back speeches followed by a lengthy Q & A session during which attendees got the chance to question the panellists about Prevent and Islamophobia.
Other speakers included Abu Ahmed, Head of Counter-Terrorism Communications and Engagement at the UK Home Office; and also in attendance was Lydia Nixon, the Schools Prevent Officer at Lambeth Council.
All of the panel were pro-Prevent, spending much of the meeting promoting their work. They stressed to parents that Prevent takes the concerns of the Muslim community seriously and is working with social media platforms and the media to tackle “irresponsible reporting.”
During one speech, financial backing for the controversial Muslim hate monitoring charity Tell MAMA was mentioned. Tell MAMA has been criticised from within the Muslim community for its links with Zionists and liberal figures who have criticised normative Islamic concepts.
Muslims needing to better integrate into society was also a theme of the evening with speakers saying “integration is a bedrock of society,” and “a lot of ills in society” that take place are due to a “lack of integration.”
During the question and answer segment, many questions and concerns were raised by the majority Muslim audience about Islamophobia and how Prevent was going to protect Muslims better.
One concerned Muslim asked how to make it easier for Muslims to report hate crimes. To which the panel responded that Tell MAMA did promote contact information for Muslim victims, including on social media.
Following the event, 5Pillars contacted Iqra Primary School asking them how they could justify holding a pro Prevent event given the community’s concerns about the programme. So far we have not received a response.
However, a community member and supporter of the school who attended the meeting (who did not want to be named) contacted 5Pillars and said that the fact that the school hosted the event did not mean that it endorses Prevent. Rather, it was an opportunity to challenge and raise concerns about Prevent to local officials, which is what happened.
Unusual like to share. I post here because some of these charities receive money from 'Prevent'.
Shocking Evidence of Charity Fraud in the Muslim Community.
Comment.
Abdul .H
Everyone knows what these guys have been doing for years. They love to sit back and do tabdee' despite being jaahil, be harsh with Muslims like the khawarij and create divisions amongst the Ummah and people who cannot recite the Quran like Abu Khadeejah go out and call everyone a Mubtadi' but at the same time commit fraud, are deceitful but then turn around & claim "we are the saved sect" lol so delusional
ب
There is many evidence showing how the west (US, Europe, etc) are spending millions in trying to change Islam, choose its leaders/imams to preach their version of Islam and dismiss other practices like Jihad or twist its meanings in order to gain an advantage over the Muslims. We also know for a fact that these imams that agree have been invited to the White House (some) and those who disagreed were jailed, tortured, and there character was assassinated on media outlets because they refuse to compromise the truth.
The fact is, they are afraid of the power of Islam when it is truly practiced and applied because the power is no longer in there hands nor is the wealth, because power is given to Allah (by following his law) and corruption is destroyed and big walls are build to tackle corruption, injustice, etc. just look at Islamic history. Look at the young teenager leaders who were victorious and the wealth of knowledge increase and applied.. contributing in this world civilization and in the hereafter. However, our current humiliation is the fact that we have abandoned jihad (not terrorism- we are against that) but jihad to defend the religion of Allah, defend the oppressed and Muslims, defend the truth, destroy and take away injustice and corruption, etc.
British Muslims should not be forced to “assimilate”, the country’s most senior counter terrorism officer has said, as he called for greater understanding of marginalised communities.
Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, who is the country’s highest ranking Asian officer, said that in a successful, integrated society, people should be free to practise their religion and culture openly rather than having to hide away.
He also said more needed to be done to eradicate poverty, improve education and increase social mobility if community cohesion was to be improved.
But he admitted Prevent, the Government’s flagship counter terrorism strategy, had been “badly handled” and warned it needed to be more community led if it was to be successful.
Mr Basu said it was no longer enough to rely on just the police and security services to win the fight against extremism and terrorism, explaining that wider society also had a role. He said the majority of those who were seeking to carry out attacks were British born or raised and therefore more needed to be done to explore social problems they were experiencing.
Rejecting the idea that British Muslims needed to assimilate, Mr Basu, who is of Indian heritage, said: “Assimilation implies that I have to hide myself in order to get on. We should not be a society that accepts that.
“You should be able to practise your culture or religion openly and still be accepting of others, and others be accepting of you. That is a socially inclusive society.” His comments come amid the ongoing debate around the best way to integrate Britain’s diverse population.
Boris Johnson recently said it was vital that immigrants who came to Britain learned to speak English if they were to enjoy the benefits this country had to offer. Speaking during the Conservative Party leadership campaign, Mr Johnson praised the "waves" of migrants who had come to the UK and "bought into our national culture”, but said too many could not speak English.
He said: "I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British, that is the most important thing. And to learn English. "Too often there are parts of our country, parts of London still and other cities as well where English is not spoken by some people as their first language. And that needs to be changed."
In 2016, Dame Louise Casey, the Government's integration tsar, said a "common language" would help to "heal rifts across Britain" and called for a target to be set by which everyone in the country could speak English.
There has also been a fierce debate over the rights of Muslim women to wear the full face veil in public.
Mr Johnson came in for criticism when he compared women who wear burqas and niqabs to letter boxes, but he also stressed he believed in the right of people to wear what they wanted.
In 2011 France became the first country in Europe to pass a law banning the full face veil.
Since 2014 teachers in Britain have been required by law to teach British values in schools, but there have been fears that Muslim schools have failed to encourage greater integration with other communities.
Among the British values that are now required by law to be taught in schools is the tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. In an interview with The Guardian, Mr Basu said the UK needed to look closer to home to understand what drove people to terrorism.
He explained that the majority of those who were seeking to carry out attacks were British born or raised and therefore more needed to be done to explore social problems they were experiencing. He said people who experienced poverty and deprivation whatever their backgrounds and culture, were more “malleable” to terrorist recruitment.
Mr Basu said: “Policies that go towards more social inclusion, more social mobility and more education are much more likely to drive down violence … than all the policing and state security apparatus put together. It is much more likely to have a positive effect on society.
“The prescription for me is around social inclusion – it’s social mobility, it’s education, it’s opportunity.”
Like to share.
Blurb
Zakir Naik is seen by many as a global superstar. The Islamic preacher has 17 million followers on Facebook and his own TV channel. But he's also a wanted man. Indian authorities accuse Naik of spreading hate speech and inspiring terrorism.
From Malaysia, where he lives in exile, Naik denied the allegations against him to The Newsmakers.
Feels embarrassing to be amercian sometimes so apologies for that Junon. I am earning new ways here in London and udenrstanding islam muc more than i ever did before.
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