Problem with homegrown British Muslims

[Giles]

JEZZA POSTING IN THE MIDDLE OF A BBQ/PARTEEH WITH THREE OTHER URBANITES!

jesus wept.
for the hard of thinking, repeat after me; you cannot defeat a belief system by military and policing means alone.

You can if you try hard enough.

Giles..

 

[Streathamite]

You can if you try hard enough.

Giles..

oh really? you'll stop people thinking, by pointing a gun at them? err, how?

 

[iROBOT]

Like isolation has helped in North Korea?

Isolation will hurt the middle class in the west in the form of massive high energy prices. It will pour more people into poverty on all sides. The West has less oil and the Middle East has less avenue to sell their oil. A recipe for economic success.

Oh well, the Chinese can step in.

The Chinese already have.

I know it's going to cause a lot of difficulties in the west, but if we are truly at war with extreamism then in war all suffer....you'll just have to drive less and pay more for your food...and other stuff (whatever) AND evolve a sustanable energy policy cause it the states that's made us dependant on oil in the first place.

In the long run it makes total sense.

Personally I think north korea is a special case, in all other forms of isolation (south africa for instance) it's worked by galvanising the population to make the change.

EDIT TO ADD...this includes and has as it's main priority for the west to stop making money from the sale of weapons.

 

[hipipol]

If you live by the sword

(and that includes it manufacture!)
You will die by it

 

[iROBOT]

(and that includes it manufacture!)
You will die by it

Goes without saying....it's unbeliveable that such an immoral industry has the universal backing of all governments across the world.

 

[teqniq]

Goes without saying....it's unbeliveable that such an immoral industry has the universal backing of all governments across the world.

I rather suspect that's got something to do with the vast amounts of money to be made. What grieves me most of all is that all that engineering and electronic expertise could be surely be better used in alternative energy industries or medicine to name just two off the top of my head.

 

[mears]

The Chinese already have.

I know it's going to cause a lot of difficulties in the west, but if we are truly at war with extreamism then in war all suffer....you'll just have to drive less and pay more for your food...and other stuff (whatever) AND evolve a sustanable energy policy cause it the states that's made us dependant on oil in the first place.

In the long run it makes total sense.

Personally I think north korea is a special case, in all other forms of isolation (south africa for instance) it's worked by galvanising the population to make the change.

EDIT TO ADD...this includes and has as it's main priority for the west to stop making money from the sale of weapons.

So You support the US stance via Cuba, Syria and Iran. You just want Europe to adopt a similar policy and extend it to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait and Pakistan. Do all the stans in central asia deserve isolation as well, they have some nasty dictators. Should we also isolate China, Vietnam and Cambodia in Asia?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Interesting article about how things went wrong in Britain and it's relations with homegrown muslims:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3569

Says things started to go off kilter with the Salman Rushdie affair. Instead of upholding the concept of Britain as a liberal and open society, the govt instead succumbed to the demands of muslim radicals and the ayatollah's fatwa, and suppressed the publication of the book in that country. The other error, was that Britain allowed itself to become a haven for muslim radicals, in the hope that the country would therefore be insulated from islamic terrorism. Needless to say, that didn't work.

 

[yield]

from the article:
"So how, at this late date, can Britain address this problem? Confronting the country’s socioeconomic disparities is the stock answer. One in four Muslims aged 16 to 24 is unemployed, more than twice the national average, and 68 percent of those of Bangladeshi and Pakistani descent live in low-income households. Undoubtedly, improving these conditions would reduce alienation. But it is too simplistic to argue that this deprivation causes terror. The 7/7 bombers were more middle class than working class—two of the four terrorists were university graduates. Also, the “martyrdom tapes” of the London bombers concentrated solely on their disagreement with British foreign policy, suggesting that they were neither motivated by domestic inequality nor viewed it as a key recruiting tool."

I'd not disagree with that.

Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy
Socioeconomic inequality.
Poor housing.
Deprivation.

Just to clarify, to my knowledge the Satanic Verses was not suppressed in the UK. Yes a large book chain didn't stock it, WHSmiths or Waterstones I think, but I definitely sold copies when I was a bookseller as a teenager.

London has a long history of accepting people contrary to the "status quo". Karl Marx for instance found a home there and is buried in Highgate cemetary.

Remember also that 1989 was the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the UK and the USA had some strange bedfellows.

 

[nino_savatte]

Interesting article about how things went wrong in Britain and it's relations with homegrown muslims:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3569

Says things started to go off kilter with the Salman Rushdie affair. Instead of upholding the concept of Britain as a liberal and open society, the govt instead succumbed to the demands of muslim radicals and the ayatollah's fatwa, and suppressed the publication of the book in that country. The other error, was that Britain allowed itself to become a haven for muslim radicals, in the hope that the country would therefore be insulated from islamic terrorism. Needless to say, that didn't work.

That's not quite true though is it, Johnny?

Wtf is a "homegrown Muslim"? Is it anything like "homegrown" pot?

 

[nino_savatte]

So You support the US stance via Cuba, Syria and Iran. You just want Europe to adopt a similar policy and extend it to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait and Pakistan. Do all the stans in central asia deserve isolation as well, they have some nasty dictators. Should we also isolate China, Vietnam and Cambodia in Asia?

So you continue to labour under your comfortable but knowledgable ignorance of all things outside US brders. You also continue to make presumptions that are based on your limited understanding of people and places.

We should be isolating you as well as your dear country.

I speak your weight. Insert coin.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

from the article:
"So how, at this late date, can Britain address this problem? Confronting the country’s socioeconomic disparities is the stock answer. One in four Muslims aged 16 to 24 is unemployed, more than twice the national average, and 68 percent of those of Bangladeshi and Pakistani descent live in low-income households. Undoubtedly, improving these conditions would reduce alienation. But it is too simplistic to argue that this deprivation causes terror. The 7/7 bombers were more middle class than working class—two of the four terrorists were university graduates. Also, the “martyrdom tapes” of the London bombers concentrated solely on their disagreement with British foreign policy, suggesting that they were neither motivated by domestic inequality nor viewed it as a key recruiting tool."

I'd not disagree with that.

Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy
Socioeconomic inequality.
Poor housing.
Deprivation.

Just to clarify, to my knowledge the Satanic Verses was not suppressed in the UK. Yes a large book chain didn't stock it, WHSmiths or Waterstones I think, but I definitely sold copies when I was a bookseller as a teenager.

London has a long history of accepting people contrary to the "status quo". Karl Marx for instance found a home there and is buried in Highgate cemetary.

Remember also that 1989 was the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the UK and the USA had some strange bedfellows.

You missed a line for bolding, right in the middle of your quote:

"But it is too simplistic to argue that this deprivation causes terror. The 7/7 bombers were more middle class than working class—two of the four terrorists were university graduates."

 

[Ae589]

suppressed the publication of the book in that country

Nope. Would you like a copy?

The other error, was that Britain allowed itself to become a haven for muslim radicals, in the hope that the country would therefore be insulated from islamic terrorism. Needless to say, that didn't work.

Eh? Was this a policy hidden from us brits, becuase it doesn't seem very british and I haven't heard of it.

 

[Ae589]

You missed a line for bolding, right in the middle of your quote:

"But it is too simplistic to argue that this deprivation causes terror. The 7/7 bombers were more middle class than working class—two of the four terrorists were university graduates."

Tis a complicated picture - although I'm not trying to explain british extremism just through division, being middle class does not protect you from racism and division.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Nope. Would you like a copy?

'Suppressed' isn't the same thing as 'banned'.

From the article.

"The mob in Bradford burnt the Satanic Verses because it regarded the book as blasphemous. They had every right to do what they wanted with their purchased copies, but no right to intimidate bookshops into pulling it from their shelves. Nor should the police have helped persuade bookstores to give in to this pressure. The situation became even more disturbing after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's head on Feb. 14, 1989. The call was frequently repeated in Britain, despite a British law that makes incitement to murder punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment. (The year prior to the Rushdie protests, there had been more than a thousand prosecutions for incitement.) Demonstrations against the book frequently resulted in chants of “Kill Rushdie, Kill Rushdie.” Perhaps the most egregious case was that of the late British Muslim activist Kalim Siddiqui, who told a public meeting, “I would like every Muslim to raise his hand in agreement with the death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Let the world see that every Muslim agrees that this man should be put away.” Still, the Crown Prosecution Service refused to act, perhaps fearful of a poplar backlash. Polls showed almost a third of British Muslims agreed with Siddiqui and the ayatollah."

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Eh? Was this a policy hidden from us brits, becuase it doesn't seem very british and I haven't heard of it.

From the article:

"Just how little Britons learned from the Rushdie affair was demonstrated during the 1990s as London became the gathering point for Islamic terrorists. Foreign governments complained that the British were tolerant of their presence because they thought that allowing radicals to set up shop in London would protect the city from terror attacks. Their irritation was understandable given such events as the public mock trial of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1997, which concluded in a death sentence pronounced on him in absentia. It wasn’t only Middle Eastern dictatorships who were incensed by London’s laxness: It took the French 10 years to extradite a suspect wanted in connection with terror attacks in Paris. The British seemed incapable of understanding that words had meaning."

 

[TeeJay]

'Suppressed' isn't the same thing as 'banned'.

Sorry Johnny but you specifically said the government suppressed the publication of the book, to quote you:

Instead of upholding the concept of Britain as a liberal and open society, the govt instead succumbed to the demands of muslim radicals and the ayatollah's fatwa, and suppressed the publication of the book in that country.

As for:

"the police have helped persuade bookstores to give in to this pressure"

"The year prior to the Rushdie protests, there had been more than a thousand prosecutions for incitement"

"the Crown Prosecution Service refused to act, perhaps fearful of a poplar backlash"

I have to say that the second claim sounds like a total load of bollocks: more than a thousand 'incitement' prosecutions the previous year? sorry I just don't believe this at all, unless they are including some very wierd things under "incitement".

The other two claims simply sound like the person writing it has no understanding of how the police and CPS operate, what they try and achieve and what criteria they use. This in no way amounts to "suppression" by the government. In fact the UK government spend a vast amount of money in protecting Rushdie and others over the years and enegaged in high level diplomatic efforts with Iran to get the fatwa removed.

Finally re. the way the term "suppression" is most commonly used in this context:

...2: the act of withholding or withdrawing some book or writing from publication or circulation; "a suppression of the newspaper" [syn: curtailment] 3: forceful prevention; putting down by power or authority; "the suppression of heresy"; "the quelling of the rebellion"; "the stifling of all dissent"...

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=suppression&x=0&y=0

This isn't the same as a bunch of Islamist extremists in the UK mounting a campaign - this is not "suppression".

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Sorry Johnny but you specifically said the government suppressed the publication of the book, to quote you:

As for:

"the police have helped persuade bookstores to give in to this pressure"

"The year prior to the Rushdie protests, there had been more than a thousand prosecutions for incitement"

"the Crown Prosecution Service refused to act, perhaps fearful of a poplar backlash"

I have to say that the second claim sounds like a total load of bollocks: more than a thousand 'incitement' prosecutions the previous year? sorry I just don't believe this at all, unless they are including some very wierd things under "incitement".

The other two claims simply sound like the person writing it has no understanding of how the police and CPS operate, what they try and achieve and what criteria they use. This in no way amounts to "suppression" by the government. In fact the UK government spend a vast amount of money in protecting Rushdie and others over the years and enegaged in high level diplomatic efforts with Iran to get the fatwa removed.

Finally re. the way the term "suppression" is most commonly used in this context:

...2: the act of withholding or withdrawing some book or writing from publication or circulation; "a suppression of the newspaper" [syn: curtailment] 3: forceful prevention; putting down by power or authority; "the suppression of heresy"; "the quelling of the rebellion"; "the stifling of all dissent"...

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=suppression&x=0&y=0

This isn't the same as a bunch of Islamist extremists in the UK mounting a campaign - this is not "suppression".

I'll agree it was an error to say that the UK govt stopped the publication of the book. The article indicates that the govt. promoted a curtailment of the spread of the book, both by getting a paperback printing stopped, and by encouraging bookstores not to sell it. I don't know if that really happened, but the author says it did, and it shouldn't be hard to fact check.

 

[TeeJay]

...I don't know if that really happened, but the author says it did, and it shouldn't be hard to fact check.

Good - I look forward to you checking the facts behind your claims.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Good - I look forward to you checking the facts behind your claims.

I make no claim. I present an article that comments on the interplay between british society and its muslim minority. In doing so, I presented a brief synopsis, as apparently the FAQ require.

 

[TeeJay]

Actually I have only jusr read this bit of the article you linked to:

"Meanwhile, British politicians failed spectacularly to understand what was at stake. The deputy leader of the Labour Party said that the paperback edition of the book should be canceled. Conservative parliamentarians groused that the price of freedom was too high, and Rushdie ultimately felt obliged to contribute 100,000 pounds to the cost of protecting his own life."

Does anyone happen to know who the deputy leader of the Labour party was in 1989?

edit: seems like it was Roy Hattersley (1983–1992)

"Hattersley was often attacked by the satirical magazine Private Eye for, among other things, his alleged equivocation over the Salman Rushdie Affair, in which the author was forced into hiding under threat of murder by Islamic extremists. The magazine alleged that Hattersley was more concerned about retaining the votes of his offended Muslim constituents and appeasing Muslim intolerance than defending freedom of speech."

His constituency was Birmingham Sparkbrook which "In the first half of the last century ... was home to many Irish families. In more recent times it has attracted people of Asian origin, who now account for some 40% of residents - the highest proportion of any seat in the country."

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Why not read the whole thing: it isn't very long, it only takes a couple of minutes. That way, you can be informed when you argue against it.

 

[TeeJay]

Why not read the whole thing: it isn't very long, it only takes a couple of minutes. That way, you can be informed when you argue against it.

I have done, thanks.

The bit about "the govt instead succumbed to the demands of muslim radicals and the ayatollah's fatwa, and suppressed the publication of the book in that country." is your own invention and isn't in the article. It is also false.

Re. the closest bit: "The deputy leader of the Labour Party said that the paperback edition of the book should be canceled." - in 1989 the Labour Party was not in government, it was in opposition.

However, I don't intend to make any more of this. The general point stands - that people didn't realise in 1989 that the Rushdie affair would preshadow a lot of what we are facing today, and that maybe some of it could have been headed off by taking a different approach back then.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I have done, thanks.

The bit about "the govt instead succumbed to the demands of muslim radicals and the ayatollah's fatwa, and suppressed the publication of the book in that country." is your own invention and isn't in the article. It is also false.

Re. the closest bit: "The deputy leader of the Labour Party said that the paperback edition of the book should be canceled." - in 1989 the Labour Party was not in government, it was in opposition.

However, I don't intend to make any more of this. The general point stands - that people didn't realise in 1989 that the Rushdie affair would preshadow a lot of what we are facing today, and that maybe some of it could have been headed off by taking a different approach back then.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

On second reading of the article, I agree that your take on it is closer than mine was.

The fact remains, however, that the book appears to have been pulled from stores in Bradford, with prompting by the police. That's arguably against the values of a free society.

 

[Ae589]

On second reading of the article, I agree that your take on it is closer than mine was.

The fact remains, however, that the book appears to have been pulled from stores in Bradford, with prompting by the police. That's arguably against the values of a free society.

I used to live in Bradford until 1996... there was a great deal of tension after the riots (started, if you'll allow me to greatly oversimplify, after muslim protests against prostitution in their neighbourhood - I think we can all understand that). Bradford is not London, and I can understand that being done for a quiet life, but you are right, I would not agree with it then, nor do I agree with it now. It was an isolated incident, though - I honestly do not think it encouraged extremists... apart form the BNP maybe.

 

[Ae589]

Foreign governments complained that the British were tolerant of their presence because they thought that allowing radicals to set up shop in London would protect the city from terror attacks.

I saw it the first time, it's just a bit fact-lite. Which foreign governments... Bush Sr?

I seriously doubt that that was the policy. Perhaps not knowing what the hell to do, that's much more likely - it was the Major goverment after all.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I saw it the first time, it's just a bit fact-lite. Which foreign governments... Bush Sr?

I seriously doubt that that was the policy. Perhaps not knowing what the hell to do, that's much more likely - it was the Major goverment after all.

From reading the article, it sounds like the Egyptian govt was one; the French also had problems extraditing a terror suspect.

 

[TeeJay]

During the 90s the French often complained that the UK was soft on Islamist groups. They were at the time facing a problem with Algerian groups who blamed France for backing the Algerian military government against the Algerian Islamist groups in the civil war there, with bombs on the Paris Metro etc.

The French sometime claimed that the UK security services tolerated extreme groups to be based in London because it kind of gave London more protection as a 'neutral zone'. The groups would often be connected with conflict in the middle east but had an 'unwritten agreement' that they would not bring violence back to the UK.

I don't know how true this ever was - it may have been French bitching and designed purely to put pressure on the UK to hand over/extradite Algerians and/or supply more information about them. It might have been a clash of police and security cultures with each side thinking it knew best. The UK services might have decided that it was easier to find out what was going on both in the UK and the middle east by having these groups based in London rather than driven underground. The final explanation is that some of these people had genuine claims for asylum (having been emprisoned and tortured in the middle east) and were not actually breaking UK law (as it stood then*) because they only dealt with middle eastern politics not anything going on in the west - so they were not being given any special treatment anyway.

* As I understand it UK law has since then been made tougher regarding the 'promotion of terrorism' overseas/internationally.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

* As I understand it UK law has since then been made tougher regarding the 'promotion of terrorism' overseas/internationally.

Yes, since sept 11.

 

[TeeJay]

Yes, since sept 11.

Actually no, not since 9/11, but even before then:

See section 59 of the Terrorism Act 2000
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/20000011.htm