Understanding Radicalisation in Britain

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Understanding Radicalisation in Britain

Posted by: Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Tags: activity,alienation,approach,britain,british,citizenship,civilisations,civilizations,clash,democracy,ethnic,exclusion,extremism,extremist,Government,headlines,identity,isolation,loyalty,Poverty,radicalisation,social,terrorism,terrorist,unemployment Posted date: February 20, 2010 | 16 Comments

The problem of violent extremism, which tends to dominate the headlines, is very real. But unfortunately, the headlines can often obscure the complex social factors from which the threat of terrorism emerges as a final result. Currently, the government’s approach to preventing violent extremism or countering terrorism is in danger of dealing overwhelmingly with symptoms, rather than root structural causes. There is a tendency toward ‘widening the net’ in the effort to find evidence of terrorist activity – but ‘widening the net’ of surveillance, risk-assessment and legal powers tends only to increase the number of innocent civilians that end up being caught in the net, leaving the terrorists to slip through. This is a huge burden on public funds, which is unlikely to produce real results. The more we ‘widen the net’, the more extremists groups will find devious ways of slipping through.

So what are the root structural factors that we need to address? Violent radicalisation is not simply the result of one cause, or even a range of causes, but is the culmination of a hierarchy of interdependent causes. These operate collectively as a mutually-reinforcing social system, which therefore requires a holistic approach.

The first factors worth noting are social exclusion and institutional discrimination. These terms by themselves do not explain violent extremism in the UK, but they are primarily responsible for a weakening of a sense of British national identity and citizenship. The majority of British Muslims are socially excluded. Sixty-nine per cent of British Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic origin live in poverty. Unemployment rates are also higher than for any other faith group; young Muslims aged 16 to 24 years have the highest unemployment rates, and are over twice as likely as Christians of the same age to be unemployed. Social exclusion is linked to institutional discrimination. According to Minority Rights Group International, British Muslim “access to education, employment and housing” is deteriorating.

The combination of social exclusion and institutional discrimination affecting a majority of Muslim communities in Britain contributes to a general collective sense of marginalisation, disenfranchisement, and disenchantment; a sense of being excluded from civil society, which thus exacerbates the experience of a separate or segregated identity to mainstream Britain. This sense of civic exclusion is reinforced primarily by a perception of blocked social mobility and discrimination, and therefore, can even affect more upwardly mobile groups.

The good news is that despite the prevalence of social exclusion, only a minority of British Muslims are likely to respond by negating their sense of British identity and citizenship, becoming vulnerable to a powerful sense of civic exclusion. A 2009 Gallup poll finds that while only half the general British population identifies strongly as British, 77% of Muslims in the UK identify very strongly as British, with 82% affirming themselves as loyal to Britain.

But trends aren’t so heartening with regards to non-Muslim perspectives of British Muslims. In 2001, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat to democracy. Now, two to one British non-Muslims believe that Islam is a serious threat to democracy, and that most Muslims support terrorism. This trend of social polarisation is a second factor that undermines community cohesion, and potentially undermines a sense of belonging amongst some British Muslims.

These increasingly negative perceptions are catalysed by a third factor: reactionary and irresponsible media reporting. A media study commissioned by the Mayor of London found that in a single week in 2006, 91% of newspaper articles published nationwide about Muslims were negative, denying “common ground between the West and Islam.” Another study by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism analysed UK press coverage of British Muslims from 2000 to 2008, and found that “Four of the five most common discourses used about Muslims in the British press associate Islam/Muslims with threats, problems or in opposition to dominant British values.”

Ironically, then, the media has served to reinforce the sense of blocked social mobility, discrimination and alienation experienced by many British Muslims, while simultaneously stoking widespread paranoia about Islam amongst non-Muslims, and promoting the views of Islamist extremists as representative of British Muslims. Together these factors interplay to create an environment that undermines the notion that Muslims belong intrinsically to British society, culture and values as citizens, and increases vulnerability to identity crisis.

Exclusion and discrimination are known to be key causative factors in mental health problems, and there is little doubt that these processes have detrimentally affected British Muslim mental health, raising the question of the link between mental illness and young Muslims’ vulnerability to identity crisis. Although there are insufficient studies of this, a recent survey by Rethink found that 61% of British Pakistanis believed that negative perceptions of them by the media and society had damaged their mental health.

At this point, the ‘pull’ factor of Islamist extremist organisations becomes significant. These extremist groups, often financed by overseas networks in the Middle East and Central Asia, exploit conditions and perceptions of disenfranchisement fuelled particularly by grievances over British and Western foreign policy. Those who are particularly vulnerable due to a convergence of personal, psychological and social reasons linked to their peer-networks, family environment and so on, may find a potential resolution of their identity crises in these extremist groups. Such groups galvanise the sense of frustration and civic exclusion to inculcate an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ mentality. At worst, this mentality misappropriates Islamic texts, language and symbolism to justify violence against ‘Their’ (Western) civilians as a response to ‘Their’ killings of ‘Our’ (Muslim) civilians abroad.

The cumulative interaction of all these factors creates a mutually-reinforcing positive-feedback system which causes a minority of British Muslims to experience violent radicalisation. Dealing with ideology and foreign policy is important – but these operate primarily as a final ‘pull’ factor; so far the deeper, structural ‘push’ factors have been neglected, and are getting worse. It is therefore imperative for Muslim communities to engage with government at all levels to get these deeper structural issues onto the agenda – for the sake of the security and prosperity of British society as a whole.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Crisis of Civilization: How Climate, Oil, Food, Finance, Terror, and Warfare will Change the World (Pluto, 2010). He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and has authored four other books on terrorism and foreign policy, including most recently The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006). He has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex, where he has taught contemporary history and political theory.

About the author

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Crisis of Civilization: How Climate, Oil, Food, Finance, Terror, and Warfare will Change the World (Pluto, 2010). He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and has authored four other books on terrorism and foreign policy, including most recently The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006). He has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex, where he has taught contemporary history and political theory.

16 Comments

sabretache

Nafeez

Please do not read what follows as an attack on you. I value the depth of your research and your commitment to the defence of demonised minorities. Also, I know that to have any chance of being taken seriously by ‘The Establishment’ (for want of a more precise term) you have to at least give the impression of respecting the boundaries of acceptable discourse set by it. Those boundaries may not be promulgated ’10 commandments’ style, but everyone involved in mainstream political discourse in this country understands them as though they were. Step outside and you become persona-non-grata – A Norman Finkelstein to Zionist Israel say – a ‘Conspiracist’, or several other shades of otherwise meaningless ‘don’t pay any attention to him’ pejoratives.

Your piece makes for an interesting academic read – understandable enough considering its original intended readership. However IMHO it suffers from one crippling assumption which, like zillions of well-intentioned left-wing activists before you, risks rendering you and it eminently co-optible by the very forces you rightly seek to expose as stupid, corrupt, vicious etc etc. That assumption (the premise of the entire piece) is implicit in your apparent acceptance of the main plank of ‘The Establishment’ framework for debate about ‘radicalisation’ and ‘violent extremism’ – namely that there is any real and genuine desire to prevent it.

My view, supported by vast amounts of ‘elephant-in-the-room’ evidence, is that ‘The Establishment’ are not stupid in their corrupt viciousness; rather they are purist Machiavellian. They are determined to cultivate, control and use ‘radical extremists’ to precisely calibrate the level of terrorist threat needed to pursue the real and near totally hidden agenda of the Anglo/US/NATO Imperial project.

Please don’t let yourself become an unwitting dupe.

LibertyPhile

Your interpretations of the Gallup Coexist study and Ken Livingstone’s Common Ground are not the only ones.

Nafeez

Dear Sabertache

Thanks for your comments. They are well taken. My books The War on Freedom; The War on Truth; and The London Bombings together clarify very clearly my views about the use of Islamist terrorism as a tool of western statecraft. i’ve clarified the same in other writings as well, one the most recent is this

http://www.newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback/

which you may have already seen.

Having said that, I disagree on some things you’ve said. You write about ‘The Establishment’ in an amorphous generalised sense, and then refer repeatedly to ‘them’. There is no such homogenous entity as ‘The Establishment’. The centralization of power in our current system is far more insidious than that. Those culpable in the kinds of covert operations practices that I’ve written about and which you’re referring to belong to highly classified agencies often linked to private defence (or other) networks who for the most part operate in a way which even most cabinet ministers are likely to be unaware. This is very clear, for instance, from the ‘gladio’ phenomenon operating in western europe during the Cold War, where ‘stay-behind’ networks were co-opted by clandestine sub-sections of intelligence agencies. What this means is that there is indeed a whole govt bureaucracy representing the ‘civilian’ public law-enforcing face of the state which may well be fully convinced that it must prevent violent extremism. in my view, there remains very important work that Muslim communities need to do in that regard, and there are agencies and depts of govt that rightly recognize this, even if there understanding of the issues is sorely wanting.

the problem is that the entire structure of this activity is often itself frequently co-opted and/or undermined by not just intelligence agencies, but in particular by the most clandestine and little-understood activities of sub-sections of these agencies which have a historic record of intersecting with extremist, criminal and terrorist organizations for all kinds of dubious reasons.

thanks
nafeez

LibertyPhile

Your theory that deep structural issues are the underlying cause of violent radicalisation doesn’t hold water.

You mention (1) “social exclusion and institutional discrimination”, (2) “social polarisation” (now that British non-Muslims in the ratio two to one believe that Islam is a serious threat to democracy), and (3) “reactionary and irresponsible media reporting”.

I think (2) and (3) are different sides of the same coin.

Regarding (1) you make much of fact that Muslims tend to be poor, ill-educated and unemployed. I don’t have the time (I have a day job and full-time research is out for me) or the figures to hand, but I am sure you are correct. There are just a few questions I would like to ask.

Does the fact that so many Muslims are in this position have anything to do with a significant proportion being relatively recent arrivals in this country from poverty stricken areas in Pakistan and India? How good is their English, how do they dress? What effort do they make? (In my local newsagent everyone speaks Urdu, at least that’s what I think it is.)

Why were so many (not all) of the actual and failed Muslim bombers in this country well educated, in jobs, and not poor?

Regarding (2) and (3) you set great store by the report “Common Ground” commissioned by Ken Livingstone. This report is transparent propaganda

The dreadful truth is that the greater part of the “news” concerning Muslims is negative. The media don’t make it up. Even the Guardian [which doesn’t hesitate to give platforms to Muslim figures such as Inayat Bunglawala and Tariq Ramadan, and who had one of their staff working on Mr Livingstone’s report!] had the same general level of negative reporting as the rest of the press. How do you explain that!

Have the good stories been missed (even by the Guardian)? Perhaps the UK Press has failed to report news like the following that never made it to their pages.

• Saudi authorities welcome plans to build church in Riyadh.

• International conference of respected Muslim scholars says the time has come to interpret Islam in light of the 21st century. Widespread support from Muslims worldwide.

• Girls now surpass boys in numbers in school and exam results in Afghanistan.

• Muhammad Bari, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says arranged marriages are not a good idea in the UK. He expects his daughters to go to University and that may be in another part of the country like their first jobs, and they will make social circles of their own. (I believe Dr Bari, in a newspaper interview at the time of his appointment, suggested we in the UK should try arranged marriages!)

• The birth rate amongst Muslim women is now at a level comparable with the rest of the population. The rate was double the national rate but has come down as Muslim women have gained equal status with men and stopped believing large families are a cultural-economic necessity. [N.B. The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.]

• Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says there are limits to multiculturalism. Welcomes Channel 4 programme exposing extremist mosques. And adds he was wrong about Salman Rushdie.

• Pakistan repeals law that requires a female rape victim to have four male witnesses.

• Dr Al-Qaradawi says Muslim women in the UK should not wear a veil. You only cover your face in the West if you are unwell, cold, or in mourning. Otherwise covering your face means you want to hide your true feelings and it is very rude.

Yahya

Libertyphile

To answer all the points would take a phenomenal amount of time, so I’ll try to keep things as short as possible.

With regard to social exclusion and institutional discrimination; Nafeez is very much correct.

Look at the treatment of protestors at the Gaza marches this year. I attended most of them. The crowd was very much multicoloured. Now, although the treatment everyone received from the Police was appalling, measures recently applied against young Muslim youths have been massively disproportionate. I need only to refer you to today’s Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/25/anti-muslim-hatred-threat-to-all

As Seamas Milne picks up, recent events very much echo the situation during the Bradford Riots in 2001 when hundreds of racists marched through Muslim populated areas of the city shouting slogans such as “Paki’s go home”; violence ensued, a small number of people on both sides were seriously injured, yet sentences issued to young Muslim youths again went far beyond the reasonable.

With regard to your comment on South Asians perhaps not trying to fit in as well, I agree partly, but not entirely.

You have a point in suggesting statistics work against Muslims because many are recent arrivals from South Asia etc, and haven’t properly fitted in. What you’ll find with regard to Pakistani’s for example, is that if you exclude Kashmiri’s (making up 60% of Pakistanis in Britain and a large proportion of British Muslims on the whole), as a group they actually excel in education, being on par with Indians and Far Easterners and well above their white counterparts. This isn’t of course because Kashmiri’s are thick, rather, it’s because they’ve come from the worst backgrounds, predominantly agricultural (being invited over during the 60’s and 70’s to work in factories). Even to this day, in many areas they live effectively in cocooned communities, mixing mainly with those originating from the same Pakistani villages, with their children studying in the same schools etc. Speaking to members of the Kashmiri society, I have always got the impression that emphasis has been on money making skills as opposed to education. In discussions, instead of asking me “where do you study? what qualifications do you have?”, it has always been a case of “how much money do you make? how many houses do you own?“ etc. Interestingly, for such reasons, others from the Pakistani community often harbour racist opinions of those from Kashmir (i.e. opting not to marry their children in to Kashmiri families etc), unfairly so. Similar observations can of course be made of Muslims from other parts of South Asia, and the world in general!

Anyway, where I suspect I disagree with you is that I believe it’s still disproportionately difficult for professional/ amply qualified Muslims to get jobs. Several studies have been conducted in recent years, suggesting it’s far more difficult for Muslims to get jobs than non Muslims (in which basic CV’s were handed out to a sample number of companies, with the only distinguishing factor being the names on these CV’s). A recent Europe wide study found that Muslims are 1/3 as likely to land the same jobs. These studies are only compounded by findings such as those by the British Social Attitudes Survey suggesting that most Britain’s are untrusting of Muslims.

When it comes to Muslims and the “News”, the media’s stance is laughably one sided. I appreciate you acknowledge that the good news often isn’t put forward; great list.

On the whole, all Muslim related media issues are de-contextualised and put forward to the masses in a typically “us versus them”/ “good versus evil” scenario. Bin Laden was demonised, rightly so, for most probably being the mastermind behind the 9/11 atrocities, yet the far more violent policies of Western governments have never been subject to any where near the bad press. 9/11 is portrayed as an out-of-the-blue attack over and over again, when that’s far from the case. Although what OBL did was truly sickening, he had his reasons to be pissed.

Just to give a few examples; US backed sanctions against the Iraqi’s between 1991- 1999 led to the deaths of upwards of 500,000 children (described by US ambassador to the UN as “a price worth paying”, the words of a psychopath), and was described by senior UN officials as effective Western backed genocide. Was this reported so? State terrorism anyone? Nope. Western governments raised Saddam as their own, supporting him during the 8 year Iran Iraq war, aiding him in dropping poison gas over Iranian villages, in a war in which 1million people died. It later emerged that at times, the US supported both sides! Western governments even gave Saddam the weapons with which he gassed hundreds of thousands of Kurds. Was any of this subject to the same scrutiny Muslim terrorist’s face? Nope. At most it was portrayed as a case of “we made a mistake, but we’ve corrected it”. Erm right by killing a further million Iraqis ye fair and balanced media people?

Bill Clinton bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in order to divert media attention on the Lewinsky affair (deceptively putting the factory forward as a “WMD-related facility”). Was this reported so? Nope. Does anyone even know that 100,000 people are thought to have died as a result (over years of lack of medicine)? Nope. It took me four years and an obscure article on a random internet blog to find that out for myself.

I could practically go on for ever and ever regarding under reported atrocities perpetrated on Muslim populations by media favoured Western governments, contrasting them to over reported issues in which Muslims have indeed been the “bad guys”.

Ultimately, why is it that the words “barbaric”, “terrorist”, “backwards”, “anti-freedom”, “anti-democratic”, are today used by the media in reference to Muslims and practically no one else? Why can’t we flick on the news to hear about Secular Christian State terrorism in Iraq or Afghanistan? Or on domestic issues, “white on white” as opposed to “black on black” violence?

Enough for now. Peace.

Yahya

Ha, sorry about the shoddy grammar & structure. My comment was put together at work!

LibertyPhile

Yahya,

(1) Thank you for mentioning Kashmir. I should also have mentioned Bangladesh.

(2) Perhaps people are reluctant to employ Muslims because they are (genuinely and rightly) worried about Islam, which brings us back to the “media” issue.

I say again, most of the news about Muslims is negative because that is the kind of news that Muslims themselves create. There is no neglected good news.

Have a look at the entries in the LibertyPhile blog category “Getting Along or Not”. http://thelibertyphile.blogspot.com/search/label/Getting%20Along%20or%20Not?updated-max=2009-12-22T20%3A56%3A00%2B01%3A00&max-results=20

Consider, for example, the man who refuses to stand for the Irish national anthem, the Danish school that has women only parents evenings, the man who wants to bring his second wife to Ireland, the suppression of St Valentine’s day, the refusal to shake hands, and so on and so on.

You’re going to tell me that these are isolated incidents, lone nutters, and I shouldn’t worry about them, or I see them in the wrong light. Well, I’m sorry that’s the way I see them and there are rather too many.

Then have a look at the other categories especially, Freedom of Speech, Islam and Europe, Sharia, Women and Islam.

(3) Has there been a misunderstanding? My list of “good” news is a parody, it is not genuine, or are you parodying my parody?

(4) I disagree almost 100% with your historical analysis.

Bejeweled

“There is no neglected good news”

What utter rubbish. By any standards, good news is always neglected. Apparently people don’t care. Give them a bit of beard and a bit of drama and supposedly that’s all British people want to read about.

One simple example: Umar Farouq “Christmas bomber” still dominates our newspapers and the rising fear of the Islamic Societies on campus *oh the horror* is in everyone’s ears. But no one mentioned that Islamic Society students – yes, broke, penniless students- managed to squeeze out over a million pounds during charity week across the UK in just the past couple of years. All for orphans around the world. BBC would rather have a piece about 2 gallery assistants in Harrow rather than this. Good news is grossly neglected, and when it comes to Muslims, you can forget about it altogether.

People need to stop living a lie. The Muslim population is HUMONGOUS. Fringe-groups get too much publicity for their own good. By your standards, the thousands upon thousands of troops from our very own soil should depict the condition of British people: illegal war-mongering brutes who enjoy taking down buidings over civilian-heads. I am sure that’s not the case.

Please let’s get over it and make way for the amazing Muslims in our society. You’re no liberty phile. Quite the opposite. Look beyond the obvious please, for your sake and mine.

Yahya

Ah lovely, it appears we have a through and through Islamophobe with us. Not just any Islamophobe though; one of the cruise-missile-liberal variety.

Libertyphile; I imagine you have several framed pictures of Christopher Hitchens and Samuel Huntington in your bedroom? And perhaps that you have a secret crush on Douglas Murray?

Anyway, I’ll respond to your very typical comment – laced sweeping, largely baseless statements and assertions- when I get some time hopefully.

Very quickly though; yes the “great list” comment
wasn’t serious. I’ll make more of an effort next time when employing sarcasm.

(It saddens me that I’ve felt the need to change my tone in such a manner. While at first, I felt you came across more innocent; your blog kinda sickened me)

Yahya

*laced with

LibertyPhile

Bejeweled

It is true the media in free societies gives more attention to things that go wrong, and controversial things, than things which are praiseworthy.

Christians at this time must be feeling miffed at the coverage of paedophilia in the Catholic Church, and issues concerning women bishops and gays troubling Anglicans.

But the fact is for a considerable period, many years, continuously, in all the Western media (even the Islamophile Guardian, and let me say that again, even in the Islamophile Guardian) the news about Islam and Muslims is overwhelmingly negative. There is incredibly little good news.

This is true even after excluding anything to do with terrorism, and the conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. [Please do not drag in these issues. I did not mention them and you do not know my views on them either.]

To blame the bad news on fringe groups will not do. The majority of items concern recognised or mainstream (or claiming to be mainstream) Muslim bodies or persons. Look at my list of spoof good news items above.

Does it not cross your mind, at any time, that this news imbalance might be, just might be, the fault of your religion and its followers and the way it is practised especially here in Europe? That the Western media and the vast majority Europeans might have a point.

Yahya

Libertyphile,

“To blame the bad news on fringe groups will not do…”. You’re implying the bodies, governments and interpretations of Islam you’ve listed above are thoroughly Islamic, and all the views discussed above are morally unacceptable. This line of thinking is on the whole ridiculous, and will be taken apart shortly.

In your asking us not to “drag in” issues of foreign policy you show only extreme naivety. These things are intricately linked. Put simply: the more you bomb people, the more reactionary they become, the more conservative ideologies become appealing, the more Niqab wearing literalists roam the streets, the more people like you complain about “Islam”.

Much of the reactionary and hard-line views harbored by people from the Middle East are a result of nothing but Western Policy. In modern times, it was only following the Western backed collapse of Arab nationalism in the 60’s, and the fueling of brutal Arab dictators that people began to seriously take refuge in hard-line “Islam”; in Egypt for example, women began to wear the Niqab, something previously unheard of in the region.

The extremist right wing ideology that led to the 9/11 and other terrorist attacks is being perpetuated by none at the moment as much as the un elected Saudi Royals. And the only reason the Saudi Royals are sitting in their high chairs is Western support. These Royals are loathed by the Saudi masses, and every time there has been an uprising, thousands have been brutalized. This can be said for numerous dictatorships throughout the Middle East, being supported by Western governments, in separate marriages of convenience; with the primary Western goals being oil and geostrategic positioning.

Another example would be that of the Taliban. They are the very same young men who were trained by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence and the CIA on the back of US money to make up the “Mujahedeen” during the Cold War. Testament to the one sidedness of the Western media, when practically every young man in Afghanistan was radicalized in the 80’s, the Western press jumped up and down, referring to them as nothing other than “freedom fighters”. They abused women back then. They didn’t believe in Democracy back then. They regularly murdered dissenters back then. Was this reported so? Nope, like I said, they were portrayed as “freedom fighters”. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were over the moon at what they had become. After the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, these “freedom fighters” were left for dead. It is their hard-line ideologies that have spread to parts of Pakistan and India, and are being imported in to the UK today. And although it’s taken for granted that Western support for the Taliban saw its end around 1991, this is far from the case. From flying in mujahedeen fighters to the Balkans in the mid 90’s to making oil pipe line deals in the late 90’s, effective Western support remained strong for a long while.

“Consider, for example, the man who refuses to stand for the Irish national anthem, the Danish school that has women only parents evenings, the man who wants to bring his second wife to Ireland, the suppression of St Valentine’s day, the refusal to shake hands, and so on and so on.”

Why could you care less about shaking of hands, the practice of Valentine’s Day, or the singing of Anthems? Does it really bother you that much?

Islamically, men and women are advised to avoid unnecessary physical contact with each other before marriage. And there’s nothing in the Qur’an about the Irish national anthem unfortunately, so I think I’ll leave that one to a side.

On a side note, there were two Christian men at work today, who refused to take Quality Street chocolates when I offered them. It clearly wasn’t a one off incident; perhaps you could shed some light on it from a liberal British perspective? I’m deeply troubled. Perhaps it was because of their adherence to the teachings of the Old Testament.

Very quickly, with regard to Pakistani rape- laws, a modern day interpretation of Islam, and Shaykh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi;

There’s nothing wrong with a modern day interpretation of Islam- Shaykh Qaradawi for one, calls for this on a regular basis- the fact that many Muslims have decided not to act upon this is irrelevant. Further, he promotes the wearing of the headscarf but not the Niqaab (face veil). I appreciate that it has all of a sudden become very fashionable for liberals to tell people what to wear, but I’m afraid the whole “Take off that headscarf! You are clearly oppressed!” attitude doesn’t really work for me.

Although I’m not aware of the details of the rape related laws in Pakistan, even if they are as backwards and Saudi-Arabia-like as you claim; this is only a result of a literalist interpretation of the Qur’an. Back in seventh century Arabia, there was no such thing as DNA evidence unfortunately, so the Qur’an kinda didn’t pick up on it.

Bejeweled, it’ll be interesting to flip the coin and send some generalizations “Libertyphile”’s way.

From a generalized perspective, here’s what many Muslims feel it means to be British, and more importantly, FREEEEEE.

Get pissed. Have lots of sex. Roam around half naked. Catch several strains of HIV. Have no community structure. Live for 40years in the same street whilst still not knowing who your neighbor was (at best complaining when they decided to have an extension, and expressing jealous discontent when they buy their new BMW). Be selfish: whine about tax a lot, even though you’re earning £50,000 a year. Cry all the time and wallow in self pity because you’ve failed to pull the girl at reception, whilst never thinking that perhaps there are others who are slightly worse off? And perhaps you have a duty to help them? Ignore the fact that our country’s responsible for the deaths of millions worldwide, and is continuing its plundering. Swear at your parents regularly, until the point at which your dads known only as “oooh ye bastard”. Then when they’re old enough, throw them in to old people’s homes. Employ an “everyone’s in it for themselves” attitude, ensuring of course that you have no real friends. Never give up your seats for old or disabled people on busses and trains; rather, carry on reading “Hello” whilst powdering your nose (or alternatively reading the Sun whilst drooling). Ignore the Britain’s colonialist history and complain when different coloured people arrive at your shores; convince yourself instead, that every Western interventionism throughout history has been an attempt to civilize the terribly backwards Blacks, Arabs, Easterners and Latin Americans. Get pissed some more. Take drugs relentlessly. Spend all your weeks earnings clubbing and drinking every Friday, regularly ending the night in the back of a police van for having a half naked fight with that guy that gave you the dodgy look. Take pictures yourself in hot steamy clubs, pretending to be happy, then plaster them on facebook, hoping that people will notice that you were pretending to be happy, and of couse that you’re “popular”. Regularly wear a couple of inches of makeup, and have aborted at least three fetuses by the time you’re 15 (with fetuses of course not being “real people”, rather, having the value of the products from a trip to the bathroom). Force your children to pay rent as soon as they’re 18: preferably whilst smoking a fag “Jimmy your eighteen now, either pay up or get aaaaout”. Become immersed in celebrity pop culture to the extent that you live in a giant concrete bubble. Aspire to be a pop star or a football player, and when you’ve made it, see to it that you’re worshiped by the masses even though you have the intellect of a fish and the moral compass of a bent plank of wood. Get breast implants, tummy tucks, botox treatment, everything physically possible done to yourself so as to cheat ageing, so that by the time you’re 50 you look like an ailing transvestite; knowing full well that as soon as you look old, you’ll have no place in society, a cast away, confined to an old people’s home where if you’re lucky, your illegitimate children will visit you once every year. Oh and to end on a happy note: die whilst reading the sports section of the Sun and having a shit, following which roughly 3 people attend your funeral so as to add weight to their prospective claiming of your assets.

Liberty! Huraah!

“Generalization” and “isolated incident wise”, I’m afraid you’ll find a lot more atheist/ pagan/ neo-Christian white people living in such a manner than Muslims advocating the slightly backwards interpretations of Islam you put forward earlier. And besides, call me backwards but afraid I’d rather be the one refusing to shake hands or sing the Irish national anthem. Valentine’s Day can take a hike too.

So anyway; tell me, does it not cross your mind that maybe the slant of left wing media critics and dare I say even religious Muslim’s against contemporary British culture may just have a little truth in it? Maybe there’s something a tad bit wrong with your preconceived notions of “liberty”, and dare I say even your society?

I guess not right?

Bejeweled; we’re screwed.

In ten years time it’ll be “backwards” not to let your children have plastic surgery at the age of 12 :’( I can imagine it now, a bold headline in the Sun:

“Barbaric Muslim parents don’t let 12 year old have breast implants to make her look like Katie Price”.

Yahya

(Apologies again for the sloppy grammar etc)

LibertyPhile

Yahya

(1) The state of Britain.

I agree Britain has serious social problems. (And BTW, I don’t agree with the Tory slogan that says we have to mend our “broken society”, it’s badly damaged in parts but a good measure is healthy and achieving good things.)

Islam is not the answer.

Tariq Ramadan on Guardian Cif offers Islam (his cue is the MPs’ expenses scandal) in his post last week “Islam’s role in an ethical society” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/23/ethics-citizenship-islam

His offer has been met with near universal disapproval and disbelief. Of the 4359 votes given to the first 50 comments (there were 281 comments in all) on his post, 4225 (97 percent) disagee with him. See the analysis here. http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/02/islams-role-in-ethical-society.html

The most popular critical theme is the fact that Islam has not done much good in Muslim majority countries in any part of the world.

Two comments drive home this theme:

“I lived for a while in Jakarta, and I can assure you, in this, the most populous Muslim country in the world, there is more corruption than you can point a stick at.” And:

“The only conclusion I can draw is that it [Ramadan’s post] is a plea to western societies to make a success of Islam its own followers have failed to realise. The problems Ramadan mentions that will be magically cured by Islam are eclipsed by far bigger and more appalling issues prevalent in Islam-majority countries that do indeed follow Islam.”

No doubt you will claim that this overwhelming rebuff of Mr Ramadan’s offer is all due to the Islamophobes who frequent the comments pages on Cif. (And, indeed, all the problems in Muslim majority counties are the fault of the West.) But, I wonder, where are his supporters? Why aren’t they commenting and voting?

There were only two commenters with obvious Muslim credentials, one owning up to having a beard, and the other an ex-Muslim, and they both opposed Mr Ramadan. See here. http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/02/islams-role-in-ethical-society.html#muslim

(2) “Bad news” examples

Individually the examples of “bad news” I gave in my previous comment are trivial but they mount up, and mount up, and mount up, and they are symtomatic of the attitudes of a large number of Muslims. I feel fully justifed at being worried by them.

Here are some more substantive examples of “bad news” items.

Faisal Siddiqi of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) criticism of the British media for its obsession with beheadings and other extreme punishments. “They constitute only 10% of sharia.” he says. TimesOnline http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6727174.ece?print=yes&randnum=1151003209000

Dr Hasan, of the Islamic Sharia Council, views on the desirability of the cutting off of hands and flogging: The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576066/We-want-to-offer-sharia-law-to-Britain.html

Dr Hasan’s views on divorce: http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2009/09/muslim-women-oppose-sharia-councils-in.html

Current thinking by some Muslims on the matter of death for apostasy: Muslim chaplain at Harvard toying with idea of executing apostates? http://thelibertyphile.blogspot.com/2009/04/muslim-chaplain-at-harvard-to-be-toying.html And http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/supreme-court-dismisses-plea-against-death-sentence-for-blasphemy_100182679.html

Indonesia’s Aceh to stone adulterers under Islamic law http://thelibertyphile.blogspot.com/2009/09/indonesias-aceh-to-stone-adulterers.html

Iran court upholds death by stoning verdict for two Azeris
http://televisionwashington.com/floater_article1.aspx?lang=en&t=1&id=17222

Why the evidence of a woman is worth less than that of a man. Islamic Sharia Council http://www.islamic-sharia.org/general/on-the-testimony-of-women-2.html

British Muslims are the least integrated in Europe, only one in 10 is integrated. Gallup Co-exist survey. http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/01/gallup-coexist-study-2009-headlines-you.html#integration

A Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man.
http://libertyphile2.blogspot.com/2010/01/living-apart-together-british-muslims.html

German Mosques Raided Over Wife-Beating Manual
http://europenews.dk/en/node/29464

Muslim prisoners ‘refuse to take part in rehabilitation programmes’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6966473/Muslim-prisoners-refuse-to-take-part-in-rehabilitation-programmes.html

After Attack on Danish Cartoonist The West Is Choked by Fear
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,669888,00.html

LibertyPhile

LibertyPhile

Yahya

(1) The state of Britain.

Islam is not the answer.

The most popular critical theme is the fact that Islam has not done much good in Muslim majority countries in any part of the world.

Two comments drive home this theme:

“I lived for a while in Jakarta, and I can assure you, in this, the most populous Muslim country in the world, there is more corruption than you can point a stick at.” And:

There were only two commenters with obvious Muslim credentials, one owning up to having a beard, and the other an ex-Muslim, and they both opposed Mr Ramadan.

(2) “Bad news” examples

Individually the examples of “bad news” I gave in my previous comment are trivial but they mount up, and mount up, and they are symtomatic of the attitudes of a large number of Muslims. I feel fully justifed at being worried by them.

Here are some more substantive examples of “bad news” items.

Dr Hasan, of the Islamic Sharia Council, views on the desirability of the cutting off of hands and flogging. His views are the relative ease of divorce initiated by a man

Current thinking by some Muslims on the matter of death for apostasy: Muslim chaplain at Harvard toying with idea of executing apostates?

Indonesia’s Aceh to stone adulterers under Islamic law

Iran court upholds death by stoning verdict for two Azeris

Why the evidence of a woman is worth less than that of a man. Islamic Sharia Council

British Muslims are the least integrated in Europe, only one in 10 is integrated. Gallup Co-exist survey.

A Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man.

German Mosques Raided Over Wife-Beating Manual

Muslim prisoners ‘refuse to take part in rehabilitation programmes’

After Attack on Danish Cartoonist The West Is Choked by Fear

Etc.

LibertyPhile

IPRD » Understanding Violent Radicalization in Britain

[…] piece, based on my parliamentary submission, for MCB’s Platform […]

Understanding Radicalisation in Britain

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