A horrible murder of a young man on the streets of London yesterday, done in the name of Islam. The killers were radicalised Muslims, and from their accent, they were raised in the area of the attack.
The attack has been widely condemned by many, of course, including Muslim organisations in this country. However it is time that the Muslim leaders did more than condemning an outrage after the event. These people being radicalised are being brainwashed on a stream of religious hatred and incitement. If Muslims truly want to live peacefully within Britain (as the vast majority of British Muslims do), the Muslims need to work at the lowest levels to make sure that the message getting through to these young people is not one of hate and aggression. It is their responsibility because only they can influence people in this way and they must weed out those people preaching hatred and violence. We have freedom of speech in this country, so now the Muslim community need to use their freedom of speech to promote a strong and united message of peace. To those that continue to preach violence I hope you are abandoned by your community and given up to the authorities to be dealt within our justice system before being ejected from our country. You are not wanted here, get the hell out.
1, You have no idea just how much the Muslim community attempts to do exactly as you ask already.
2, Those who are radicalised take the view that if you are not radicalised yourself, then you are not a true Muslim. Point being, they won’t be swayed by anyone.
They clearly are not doing enough - they need to do more. I don’t need to quantify that - it’s just obvious.
The radicalised are already beyond help. But radicalisation takes time and organisation. What I am saying is that the Muslim community know who are the ones doing the brainwashing and must weed them out. Isolate and remove those that incite others to violence.
You read the “The Islamist” Ed Husain? Well worth it. It is both depressing and eye opening. It does leave many difficult questions but also gives an insight how the fundamentalists work in recruiting and radicalising. Not sure your average decent Muslim can do a lot frankly. Yeah, they can highlight the loons - kick them out of the mosque - but then they just operate outside of it.
Well done too to the Muslim council of Britain for this press release.
Morning BL. Yes I’ve read the Islamist - as you say, worth the time and eye opening. My eyes are fully open and I can’t see any solution except the one that can be delivered by the Muslim community. It cannot be fixed from the outside because that will only fuel the radicalisation.
Regarding what the decent Muslims can do, yep kicking the loons out of the mosques would be a good start. They will move to houses and streets but they will have been identified and to some extent, isolated. Once the loons are literally in the streets they will have been isolated and can then be removed. The Muslim community can and should work tirelessly to make sure that the youngsters hearing the message in the streets hear the other side of the Islamic message.
I am not sure that you can argue 1, given the complete lack of information we have. You can claim that it is obvious, but it isn’t obvious who radicalised these people or how. For all we know right now, they were radicalised outside of the Country, or via the Internet. In either case, the leaders of the Muslim community in the UK would have had very little opportunity to do anything to stop that.
Your point 2 goes to the same problem. Until you know how they were radicalised, it is too much to blame a community that could have played no part in that radicalisation.
Saying they need to do more and it is obvious, isn’t really justifiable until we have more information. It may prove to be that you are right, that they were radicalised in the UK, at a Mosque that was well known for being a trouble spot within the Muslim community, at which point fingers can be pointed and questions can be asked. Until that time, I don’t think it is fair to blame a community, just because some nutters decided to use their name for their barbaric actions.
You read the “The Islamist” Ed Husain? Well worth it. It is both depressing and eye opening. It does leave many difficult questions but also gives an insight how the fundamentalists work in recruiting and radicalising. Not sure your average decent Muslim can do a lot frankly. Yeah, they can highlight the loons - kick them out of the mosque - but then they just operate outside of it.
Well done too to the Muslim council of Britain for this press release.
It is indeed an excellent press release. But what is the Muslim community doing about its own radicals? Not enough. I dont buy it that they cannot do enough to stop ‘themselves’. How do they select their clerics? Who runs their mosques? Did they allow abu hamza to preach to them - yes and loads of them sucked it up. As I said on the other thread , we cannot hit back - they want to fight in the name of their ‘God’, they will fight and fight they have no self preservation due to their demented view. They will have to treat themselves from the inside, depressing stuff as we cannot control that. And if they refuse, will they be accessories? It wont stop the extreme right here in UK attempting to smash them, there will be more bloodshed, i fear yesterday they really started something with their ‘show murder’
My point 1 is obvious because what I am saying is that more should be done. So let’s say they are doing a lot already. Fine, do more. What is being done is manifestly not enough otherwise we would not be seeing the problems that we are.
About point 2, yes we don’t know that these two scumbags were radicalised in this country but it is more likely than not (because we know that radicalisation is on offer here in the UK and there are plenty of home grown radicalised youths). Not conclusive proof, but as I say - more likely.
About blaming the community. I am NOT blaming the Muslim community at all. I blame the “radicalisers” and the radicalised. I believe they are in the vast minority within the Muslim community and that the Muslim community are the only ones who have even a chance to solve the issues - so like it or not the responsibility to try falls at “their” feet. I’m not “blaming” them for not having solved the problem already, I am expecting and hoping that they will work tirelessly to solve the real issue. It is what every decent Muslim community leader and every decent Muslim community follower should be thinking about and acting on.
Kaos, we could probably go on all day like this, but really my points were clear and unarguable. Rather than argue the points you should consider your position. If you can come up with a better solution I would love to hear about it. This is my feeling, my position is stated. So rather than taking your normal contrarian stance, how about you giving some more positive contribution to the situation. And if you can’t do that, simply give a thought to the young man who lost his life yesterday.
And BL - yes that was a good press release from the Muslim Council of Great Britain. That is exactly the sort of stance that should be encouraged - and the right people to take the stance.
Agreed, this terrorism has gone on long enough for radicalism to be rooted out if the muslim masters wanted it to be. They aren’t doing enough. Obviously the murderers yesterday need to have their motives properly explored, but they made enough of a show on film yesterday to convince most of us, we can be sure that arent going to change their motives.
I don’t see how you can suggest that what is being done is manifestly not enough, when you have no idea what is being done?
You can’t seriously expect to reach a situation where no-one is ever able to act in an extreme manner in the name of a god, or an ideology?
As to a positive point, how about…wait and see. Give it a couple of days, get some information and THEN form an opinion. Don’t form an opinion based on assumption and putting 2 and 2 together to come to 6.
My only point to you. and others, is wait and see. Get the right information and then form an opinion, I have already said, you may well be right and it may be legitimate to say, more needs to be done from within; however, saying that now before any information comes to light is not appropriate.
Let’s wait and see before we start pointing fingers and asking people (when we have no idea of the work they are actually putting in) to do more.
It’s funny how they condem such actions done by individuals within their religion. Yet, actions done by individuals outside their religion against their religion; such as wanting to ban the burka, cartoons about the Prophet etc causes them to take physical action by protesting in mass numbers.
I’m really quite serious when I say, I agree to both those points and I am NOT taking the piss.
Point 2 is the same as the fallacy of “the gun amnesty”
That policy is flawed because the kind of people you want to remove the guns from, are the kind of people who would never turn a gun in… they would just laugh at the idea.
The philosophy and motives of the radicalised Muslim suggest that to cooperate with the Western ideals, views, perspectives and so forth mean you are not true to your faith. So they can’t be reached by some nice Immam saying, we think this is terrible. They have no respect for those voices nor what they are saying.
You cannot say that not enough is being done without knowing what is being done - that is a very simplistic view.
Working with rough numbers the picture is very different: There are about 2.8mn Muslims in this country and over the last 5 years we have had 1 ‘terrorist’ attack (terrorist in quotes because had the same criminal act been committed by a pair of white English Christians shouting anti Muslim abuse it would be called just ‘murder’ or an ‘act of mindless violence’). We also know that a number of, what security services deem, serious terrorist plots have been foiled in the same period stands at less than 5. The total number of terrorism convictions in last 12 years stands at 312.
As anyone who ever worked in/with security services knows the vast majority(98%) of successful operations that lead to convictions succeed due to good intelligence and in the case of Islamic terrorism all the intel comes, in the first instance, from the community or informers - all Muslim.
So, overall I’d say that the Muslim community is doing quite well.
Furthermore, according to Home office figures there have been 37000 racially motivated attacks in Britan in year 2011/12 (and another 43000 hate crimes) - more than 100 per day and on average 5 fatal racist attacks per year in the last 20 years. Following Simon’s logic, one could ask if the white British community is doing enough?
I guess, my overall point is, that last night’s incident is a dreadful and disgusting crime purported by two sick individuals and any logic that tries to pin it on the whole of Muslim community in this country is illogical and flawed at best…
The point I was trying to make is that it would not have been branded as terrorist attack if it had not been purported by two Muslims. And the answer to your question is A - as someone who spent more than 10 years working in national newspapers, I can safely say that most newsdesks would behave according to the rule I identified as it sells papers…
Again. I am NOT trying to “pin it” on the whole Muslim community - I never said ANYTHING like that - please don’t fall into the “Kaos-chaos” of reading what isn’t written.
What I do think is that the Muslim community should do more. More than what - YES I don’t know how much they are doing, but they need to do MORE. YES that is a simplistic view, but when you think about it, can you propose any other possible solution (or possible group that might be able to solve it). I’m not saying the Muslim community can solve the issue with 100% certainty but I am 100% certain that no other group could do it.
Let me try and explain it like this - If I see my neighbours house on fire and I am the only one there that has a phone, it is my duty to call the fire brigade because I am a part of the community and it is the right thing to do.
