Rolled-up Trousers

Terror raid on Muslim youth activities?

If the BBC report is anything to go by, the latest terror arrests are pretty stinky already. There have been two raids, one on a restaurant where 12 diners were taken away after hours of questioning.

In a warning to anyone organising Muslim youth activities, the BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said:

"My understanding at this point is that this involves people suspected of facilitating training activity within the UK which might have allowed others to take part in terrorist activity," he said.

"Here in the UK it's more forms of bonding and getting groups together as well as radicalising those taking part. It's not necessarily military or terrorist training or blowing things up, it's more training in the sense of groups bonding and working together".

Bloody hell. But it certainly fits in with previous police pronouncements.

The other raid is at an Muslim school where the killer facts are:

According to its website the 54-acre premises also encourages Islamic groups to "appoint a person from your centre who wishes to serve the community and send them to us to be trained".

It also says these individuals will then become "qualified enough to teach in local Masajeds and Madares".

I have no idea how this possibly qualifies as news. A school encouraging people to come to their institution and learn. Bang 'em up guv.

Martin Sullivan at Islamophobia Watch replies to Shahid Malik MP's criticism of Muslim leaders because of one Muslim's call for aspects of shariah law and recognition of holidays. More at Lenin's Tomb

Sufi Muslim Council exposed

A new blog has sprung up to watch the movements of the recently founded Sufi Muslim Council.

It's started off with quite a lengthy submission with various points, including the SMC's links to US neocons. This has understandably had Blair's government fawning all over it.

It backs up the suspicion among many that the SMC are not so much "apolitical" as the "right sort of political". In New Labour speak, it's fixing the Muslims around the policy. It won't succeed.

Letter from British Muslims

The letter that has been sent to the Prime Minister from 38 Muslim organisations is to be welcomed. Instances are too few and far between of the community themselves setting the agenda in this manner. They've sent a clear message about this country's foreign policy's role in creating the terror threat we face.

Particularly welcome are the signatures of three of the four Muslim MPs (Khalid Mahmood counted himself out). For at least one of them, it marks something of a u-turn. I was on Newsnight with Mohammad Sarwar after the July bombings, with him arguing against this very point. Still, better a repentant convert than a constant sinner.

It shows the frustration that has set in over the cycle of violence that the prime minister seems to have locked us into. The government has responded on the back foot. Kim Howells, former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and now minister for the Middle East, described the letter as "facile" and said:

Charity and petitions

Reaction amongst Muslims in this country to what's going on in the Middle East is one of anger. I also sense despondency.

Those that do manage to get off their backsides rapidly swirl around petitions to sign up to via email. Others are mobilising charity efforts for the undoubted humanitarian carnage that has been wrought.

However, people have got to stop and think. Are we weak and powerless because we can't get enough people to sign up for petitions? Is it even due to a lack of funding given to charity abroad? Certainly not. British Muslims are not found wanting, particularly on the latter.

Shahid, what do you want us to do?

Shahid Malik MP entered the July bombings anniversary fray with an article in the Daily Mail (hat tip to IW). He calls on Muslim community leaders to do more to tackle terror.

Just like his party leader though, he's remarkably short of detail on exactly what it is he wants done:

My worry now concerns those Muslim leaders, many of whom, I am sorry to say, have lost the stomach for the fight. I am fed up with their constant sniping about the Government's failure to follow up on all the recommendations of the Task Force, set up in the aftermath of the bombing.

A fight with fellow Labour MP Sadiq Khan?

But the truth is the Government alone cannot defeat the evils of terrorism. Muslim communities must take the leadership role in overcoming the extremists who have insinuated themselves into our midst. Just as it is for white Britain to defeat and disown the British National Party, so it is down to us, Britain's Muslims, to defeat and disown the terrorist jihadists who claim so wrongly to be acting in our name.

Yet it is easier for organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain to criticise the Government, the police or the media, rather than take a long, hard look at our own communities. It is easier for them to encourage a victim culture that sees Islamophobia around every corner, rather than to challenge within. But that is not leadership. It is abdication.

On the anniversary of the July bombings

Muslims have to deal with the terror threat, but not in the way the prime minister thinks

It’s not a call anyone takes lightly. The leader of your country issues a call to arms to defend it from those bent on death and destruction. This is exactly what Tony Blair has done since the July bombings, repeating his plea for Muslims to wipe out terrorism again this week.

He was curiously short on detail though. He made it sound like there are potential confrontations we could have on every street corner with would-be assassins, but anyone can see this is preposterous. The government have wideranging powers to arrest terrorists, and presumably there are not a lot wandering the streets we know about. Maybe the recommendations made by the Muslim taskforce that Blair himself put together last year can provide answers. Alas, they have been ignored.

It is odd in today’s age, where individual freedom abounds, to the point where society is said not to exist anymore, that a whole community can still be brought to book for the actions of a mindless few. But still, let’s take on the PM’s challenge. Since the bombings last year, the situation of the Muslim community has been examined to the nth degree. Scrutiny has fallen on our beliefs, personalities, institutions, languages, foods, and clothes. There’s even been analysis of the sexual positions Muslims adopt and how this contributes to terror.

Blair on defeating terror

Tony Blair has said that "the Government itself is not going to defeat this [terrorism]" - but the Muslim community can.

I am probably not the person to go into the Muslim community...

That's probably understating it!

It's better that we mobilise the Islamic community itself to do this.

"I know everyone always wants to blame the government for everything that is happening .... but we can't defeat this extremism through whatever a government does.

"We can only defeat it if we have people in the community who are going to stand up and not merely say 'you are wrong to kill people through terrorism... you're wrong in your view of the West, the whole sense of grievance, the ideology is wrong, is profoundly wrong'."

This repeats the Blair tactic for batting off the link between terror and foreign policy - by claiming that not only is there no link, but there is nothing wrong with foreign policy in the first place.

To my Muslim brothers and sisters, this call to arms by our Prime Minister is something we can't take lightly. Please get a box from one of your cupboards, take it outside your front door, stand on it and proclaim that terrorism is wrong. Let's see if it works.

Sardar, conservatives and liberals

Ziauddin Sardar has criticised the government-backed 'roadshow' of scholars that aimed to tackle extremism. In this week's New Statesman he says only 'traditionalists' and 'conservatives' were invited to speak rather than 'liberals' like himself:

As a result, differences between conservatives and liberals are much more pronounced. Conservatives such as the intellectual Tariq Ramadan and the American preacher Hamza Yusuf Hanson insist the only people with the right to interpret Islam are the ulema (religious scholars), who must seek solutions to contemporary problems within a largely ossified tradition. While Ramadan has called for the hudood laws, the problematic crime-and-punishment aspects of Islamic law, to be suspended, he is a strong supporter of the sharia. Hanson rejects the whole idea of religious reform and presents a romanticised notion of tradition where the sheikh or the teacher knows all.

What does any of this have to do with the price of cheese? Yet again Sardar is using the tragedies of 9/11 and 7/7 to forward this agenda of chucking the Qur'an out of the window. As if the Beeston bombers listened to mainstream "conservative" scholars stressing the importance of Islamic law, and from that decided to do their wicked deed. Even the most ardent critics of these imams would acknowledge they condemn terror, whatever their view on the importance of Qur'an and shariah.

More over at Blogistan.

Would the Tories work with the MCB?

Michael Gove - Conservative leader David Cameron's version of Peter Mandelson - has hit out at leading Muslim organisations the MCB and MAB, lamenting the government's unwillingness to take on the "Islamists".

In his new book coinciding with the anniversary of the London bombings, Celsius 7/7, serialised in the Times, he says:

Last summer [Tony Blair] spelt out that a much broader effort is required to tackle, at root, the ideology of Islamism that has bewitched so many minds. But in the struggle against extremism the British State has failed to tackle the underlying ideological currents that favour Islamism. Organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), whose members have shown sympathy for extremist positions, are rarely challenged, and certainly not publicly by the Government or its agencies.

But what is Islamism? According to Gove in the same book:

Marrying your cousin

Austrolabe ask why more Muslim leaders are not tackling the problems associated with marriages between cousins. Genetic disorders amongst children of such marriages are hugely prevalent.

So far the only person to highlight this has been Labour MP Ann Cryer, who called for a ban on the practice.

If there are any guys out there looking for a prospective spouse, why not take Haroon's advice and look for a Latina? I couldn't possibly comment.

Pakistanis and Egyptians google "sex" more than anyone else (updated)

And Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are in the top 10.

Via

UPDATE: gay.com report that Muslim countries are also the biggest googlers of "gay sex".

What are we to make of this?

Christian rights in Muslim countries

The head of the Catholic Church in England has called on Muslim countries to provide the same rights to Christian minorities that Muslims enjoy in Britain. He also said British Muslims should speak up on this matter.

My view is simple. Everyone needs more rights in these so-called Muslim countries. It's not as if the Muslim populations of many of these despotic regimes are engaging with vibrant democracies with freedom of speech, while only Christians languish. Even in terms of freedom to practice religion, some Muslim states have banned the hijab.

Western powers have for decades watched idly-by while legitimate political opposition has been mercilessly crushed by the dictators. The voices of a few British Muslims is hardly going to be worth much when our own Foreign Office does nothing. Cormac Murphy-O'Conner would do well to look at the wider picture.

Hopefully he'll also be speaking to British Jewry, Hindus, and Chinese.

Blair thought women were forced into hijab

The Prime Minister held a summit with Muslim women at Number 10 this week. Apparently, he revealed his ignorance about the hijab there:

"I will be absolutely frank with you. From my perspective, a few years ago, I would probably have thought that someone would not wear it from choice but because that was what people were made to do."

For someone with so much to say about Islam, his recent ignorance is galling.

Auto Wudu Washer

This is class.

Were Muslims in America before Columbus?

The popular Muslim narrative of history is under fire.

Muslim pop culture

Saracen and Indigo Jo blog about Yvonne Ridley's scathing attack on nasheed concerts and Sami Yusuf in particular. Saracen disagrees with the idea of an Islamic pop culture. I think we need firmer grounds on which to criticise than just simply saying it's copying Western precepts.

It's not just about aping other people or commercialisation. For many, music is something that uplifts the soul. People can identify with lyrics that chime with their daily experiences or a life crisis.

Personally, I'm really not into the nasheed scene, but more for the reason of me thinking it's not up to much yet. Lyrically, the songs are so basic and in your face. The best of Western music is poetic with a lot of the hidden meanings. There isn't that depth yet to the Islamic stuff. Then there's the fact that many of the biggest artists may have nice voices, but they are not performers. On stage, they are completely wooden, lacking in basic charisma.

If anyone thinks this too harsh, yes the nasheed scene is still in it's infancy and no doubt over the years, talent will develop.