How to categorise every Muslim as an extremist

[Ibtisam]

According to documents seen by the Guardian, the government is planning to move its counterextremism "prevent" strategy from targeting those that promote violent extremism to those that endorse extremist ideas in general but condemn violence. The idea being that there is a "conveyer belt" from people finding extremist ideas appealing to then becoming violent extremists themselves, and that by the government working with non-violent extremists (which the government has apparently been doing) to tackle violent extremists simply legitimises and emboldens the world view of said extremists and hence makes their followers easier prey for the violent extremists. Got it?

 

But who is an extremist? To provide us with the answer, the state will do your thinking for you and will apparently provide a checklist against which you can tick off the various criteria. Anyone calling for an Islamic state, who believes in Jihad, who thinks sharia law is important or who considers homosexuality to be a sin becomes an extremist. What about just going all the way and extending it to anyone who believes God is the sovereign of the heavens and the earth, and that Islam is his chosen religion? Or maybe it would be easier to just get al-Qaida to draft the manual on "How to categorise every Muslim as an extremist".

 

There is much debate in Muslim communities on what an "Islamic state" actually is or should look like in the modern world; what is the nature of Jihad; what does sharia law actually mean; how Islam and other Abrahamic faiths view homosexuality and so on. To circumvent and undermine the evolution of Islamic thought and simply opt for al-Qaida's definitions shows a government that has lost its marbles in pursuit of counterterrorism (fuelled by a threat that is being exaggerated, as Stella Rimington reminds us again today). The government is being driven by short-term political expediency than the longer term view necessary for our collective safety.

 

Rather than encourage Muslim groups and civil society to widen the space for young Muslims to discuss contentious issues and take the time they need to come up with their own answers, we have a state-sponsored proposal to essentially close down and criminalise perfectly legitimate and much needed debate. More and more young Muslims are getting politically active (not least because of events in the world) and want to do their bit to fight injustice. Civil society needs to be able to capture this dynamism and energy into the democratic framework where real change is possible. The government needs to keep out of debates on theology, it is not their role to interfere - we do not live in a theocracy - and keep their focus on those that peddle violence. They already have sufficient powers to use against preachers of violence without needing to start policing ideas and the terms of the debate too.

 

The excessive throwing around of the term "extremist" or "Islamist" by certain groups with such broad brush definitions will turn every Muslim activist into a defacto Islamist and render the word "extremist", an otherwise vital term, meaningless. Any Muslim active in community work is going to have derived at least some of that sense of community spirit from Islam. What on God's earth is wrong with that? Isn't that sense of faith-based decency a good thing?

 

The government already has precious little trust in grassroots British Muslim circles on their preventing extremism agenda - and if the suggested plans are true then that disconnect will simply extenuate the circumstances, making us all that much less safe.

 

Asim Siddique

 

Source: Guardian

[Ibtisam]

Although it has yet to come clean on the issue, the Government believes that our commitment in Afghanistan will last for generations. Our ambassador to Kabul blithely mentioned us being there for "30 years".

 

But what are we there for? Any discussion of strategy among commentators tends to revolve around one of two opposed views. The first adheres, doggedly, to the post-9/11 mission: to ensure no return to when the Taliban harboured the mass murderers of al-Qaeda.

 

This view is bolstered by considerable evidence that terrorist plots in Europe involve Anglo-Pakistanis "holidaying" in the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan; it is overlain with the liberal interventionist belief that we should not allow the Afghan people to revert to the clutches of demented creatures who throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls after they have burned down their schools.

 

Problems in that mission, though, have given rise to the second view: that we should cut our losses and get out.

 

It is as well to spell out these problems; they are grave indeed. On their walls, US commanders have maps of Afghanistan dotted with red and yellow squares illustrating the allied nations' undertakings. Yellow indicates what missions individual Nato governments might allow their troops to perform; red that, for example, the Luftwaffe will not be flying at night. John Hutton calls on Nato allies to pull their weight, but the existing command structure is hopeless. Different forces are pursuing mutually contradictory, rather than compatible ends: some are building villages, while others get blown up in error.

 

In the prevailing climate of uncertainty, the Taliban have taken advantage of the no-man's-land that is the amorphous Pashtun belt, and of the opportunities provided there by the failed state that is their Pakistani neighbour. For fear of alarming Islamist sensibilities, any co-operation between the US and Pakistani armed forces has to be virtually invisible – always assuming that the armed forces are loyal to Islamabad rather than the Taliban. Each stray missile that kills a Pakistani civilian (another 31 dead a few days ago) makes that co-operation less likely, regardless of the money showered on the Pakistani armed forces.

 

But the second view is voiced less often – except by generals in private. That is because a depressing uniformity of outlook prevails among politicians in the two major parties, namely that a critical view of what is happening in Afghanistan might undermine the western alliance. Our young soldiers are being killed just to show willing in Washington, doubly so now that a popular Obama has replaced Bush.

 

History bulks large in what the critics have to say, namely that Afghanistan has always proved to be a graveyard for foreign interlopers. They are in sympathy with Kipling's "Jest roll out your rifle and blow out your brains / An' go to your Gawd like a soldier" when you lie wounded on the Afghan plains. Meanwhile, Nato and the US have not succeeded in eliminating al-Qaeda (in north-west Pakistan), only in turning the Taliban into the spearhead of an Afghan nationalist insurgency. Paradoxically, the Taliban have become the solution to the lawless chaos they create, as they were before 9/11.

 

It is impossible to build a central government in a country where local leaders resent all outsiders, and whence anyone of any ability has fled. With an abundance of opium, rather than oil, there is little prospect of creating an Afghan national army equivalent to that now patrolling Iraq. Hence further confusion. Is it the West's task to engage in drug eradication – without giving Afghan farmers any alternative – let alone to reverse the religious Reformations the Islamists represent?

 

The failure to have a wide-ranging debate about Afghanistan and to reach any mutual conclusions has meant the policy drift of the past six years and the strategic confusion today.

 

Meanwhile, President Obama has ordered 17,000 more troops into the fray, although he is not calling it a surge, since the preconditions that there were in Iraq do not exist in Afghanistan. He has half-met military demands, even before his regional envoy Richard Holbrooke has reported, and while Secretary of State Clinton is doing the big-picture stuff among Muslims in South Asia.

 

Obama's hesitancies reflect his worries that too precipitate a withdrawal from Iraq might destabilise the fragile stability there. He also has to calculate what price the Russians may demand for providing alternative logistics routes into Afghanistan, replacing those interdicted by the Taliban, abandonment of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic being top of Moscow's priorities. They switched off the Kyrghyz route just to bolster their hand.

 

Recent events in Pakistan's Swat Valley illustrate the extent of our logistical dilemmas. Without informing the US, the Pakistani government concluded an open-ended deal with the Taliban, who were outnumbered four to one by the Pakistani army.

 

The Taliban militants were convinced to lay down their arms in exchange for the restoration of Islamic law to the region. US officials called it a "surrender disguised as a truce", concerned that the agreement could create a haven for extremists. The shops reopened and a "caravan of peace" arrived to celebrate the return of justice and order. But the caravan's Taliban escorts shot dead a Pakistani TV journalist covering the spectacle, flagrantly violating the 10-day ceasefire they had just agreed. So much for talking to the Taliban, and al‑Qaeda now has another potential enclave to move into, should Waziristan prove too hot or Somalia too remote.

 

Instead of compounding past mistakes, perhaps it's time to refocus on the original mission: eradicating al-Qaeda, a task we can all agree on. That can only be done by intelligence-led air or Special Forces operations, rather than by doubling the number of US troops on the ground. That should also minimise the likelihood of the war creeping further into Pakistan itself, in the manner of the US seeking victory in Vietnam in Laos and Cambodia. The prospect of Pakistan disintegrating into half a dozen failed states suits no one, least of all our ally India.

 

Instead of doling out enormous amounts of aid to bumptious Afghan and Pakistani leaders, we should restrict it to providing a judicial system and decent secular schools, thereby satisfying what ordinary Afghans and Pakistanis want most. And last but not least, if we are worried about Islamist terrorism in Britain, then the solution lies with what we are prepared to do to stop it ourselves, rather than chasing phantoms in a land already dotted with the white tombstones Kipling also memorialised.

 

Do British troops die in Afghanistan to show willing in Washington?

[Ibtisam]

Today's Headlines in the telegraph Pupils told to think like a suicide bomber

 

The exercise is part of a teaching pack aimed at secondary school pupils that has been adopted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It requires children to prepare a presentation on the July 7 atrocity – in which 52 innocent people died – "from the perspective of the bombers".

 

They are asked to summarise the reasons why they thought the bombers wanted to carry out their attacks and even suggest some more.

 

It has been produced by Calderdale council in Halifax, West Yorks, which borders the area where two of the July 7 bombers lived, and has been adopted by schools and even police forces across the country.

 

The pack, which is called "Things do Change", is intended as a way of addressing issues such as terrorism and suicide bombing through the national curriculum.

 

But it was criticised yesterday by victims, educational experts and politicians, who feared it could be "dangerous" to ask children to adopt the mindset of a terrorist.

 

Jacqui Putnam, who survived the Edgware Road bomb on July 7, said: "I can't see why anyone would think it is a valuable exercise to encourage children to put themselves in the position of men who treated people in such an inhuman way.

 

"To encourage children to see the world in that way is a dangerous thing. Surely there must be a better way of achieving their objective?"

 

Mavis Hyman, whose daughter, Myriam, was killed in the July 7 bombings, said: "I don't think that anyone can put themselves in the minds of these people. I have tried to see it from their point of view. I have read books and watched films and it has not succeeded. "

 

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, said the pack risked "encouraging the sort of belief we're trying to work against".

 

"They should be looking at it from the victims' view," he said. "Whoever thought this up has no understanding of the communities where we are fighting against extremist beliefs."

 

Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the Commons terrorism sub-committee, said: "How useful is it to pretend to be a suicide bomber if it defeats the object of the lesson? Imagine the uproar if we suggested that children play-acted the role of Hitler."

 

The pack was made available through a Government-­sponsored website called www.teachernet.gov.uk A section entitled "Community Cohesion" requires pupils to "prepare a brief presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the perspective of the bombers".

 

After watching a DVD from the pack, which costs £200, the class is supposed to be split into four, with one group asked to adopt the perspective of the bombers.

 

Sail Suleman, the author of the pack, told the Times Educational Supplement : "We're looking at why people become extreme. Why do young people go out and do what the bombers did? Was it pressure from individuals they were hanging out with? Hopefully, we'll encourage pupils to stay away from those individuals."

 

Other groups are asked to imagine the bombings from the perspectives of Muslims in Britain, non-Muslim Asians and British people in general.

 

The teaching pack is already being used in Islamic schools and mosques in West Yorkshire, as well as in local authority-run schools.

 

A number of other authorities, including Birmingham, Sandwell in the West Midlands and Lancashire, have begun using it in schools and several police forces, including the Metropolitan, West Yorkshire, Thames Valley and Greater Manchester, have adopted it.

 

Tahir Alam, the education spokesman of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "This isn't any different from any educational tool people use all the time. Pupils imagine they're living in the 12th century. The important lesson is that these things are never morally justifiable."

 

The education department withdrew the pack from the teachernet website yesterday.

 

A spokesman said: "While the resource in no way looks to justify or excuse the terrible events of 7/7, and is designed to educate against

[Sir-Qalbi-Adeyg]

No one is gonna read all that, why don't you summarize it for us, what are you trying to get across this time?