Islamist extremism: so did we cure the problem?

[daftandbarmy]

Islamist extremism: so did we cure the problem?

This week's disclosures from WikiLeaks confirm that Britain was a breeding ground for Islamist terrorism. But, 10 years after 9/11, we still pander to extremism, says Andrew Gilligan

The East London Mosque, the largest in Britain, hosted a "live telephone Q&A" with the world's most dangerous al-Qaeda preacher, advertised with a poster showing Manhattan in flames. At the North London Mosque, equally important and well-known, one of the trustees is a supporter, and former leader, of a terrorist organisation. According to the BBC, he "is said to have masterminded much of [its] political and military strategy" from his perch in London.

Over the last few days, the Guantanamo Bay files leaked to this newspaper have shown in compelling detail how Britain became a global hub of terror, with at least 35 inmates of the detention camp radicalised here in the years before 9/11. Yet the two examples I give do not come from the leaked files. They are much more recent. The people who run those two mosques have been in no way troubled by the authorities. In fact, they have been helped by them. At the North London Mosque, the radical activist was actually installed by the police – and remains a trustee. And in the financial year to 2010, the year after it hosted that session with the fundamentalist preacher, the East London Mosque received £660,000 of taxpayers' money – some of it from a Home Office fund for "preventing violent extremism".

There is a reason why Britain, in the words of one French official, is and remains the "Pakistan of the West", an incubator, entrepot and exporter of Islamic radicalism. There is a reason why, according to MI6, we face a "unique" threat from home-grown extremists. There is a reason why Britain is the only country in the Western world to have been subjected to a successful suicide terror attack by its own citizens. These things have happened, in part, because the last government, and Britain's security establishment, got its policy just about as wrong as it was possible to get. We were harsh where we should have been liberal – and liberal where we should have been harsh.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8475290/Islamist-extremism-so-did-we-cure-the-problem.html

 

[Journeyman]

If any doubt that the UK is "the 'Pakistan of the West'," I can only suggest you watch the documentary, Four Lions.  ;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some other bits of the referenced article resonate with me, specifically:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8475290/Islamist-extremism-so-did-we-cure-the-problem.html

There is a reason why Britain, in the words of one French official, is and remains the "Pakistan of the West", an incubator, entrepot and exporter of Islamic radicalism... We were harsh where we should have been liberal – and liberal where we should have been harsh.

Control orders, the push for three months' detention without charge, random and blanket stop-and-search, and Britain's complicity in torture did little or nothing to restrain terrorism. But they undermined the rule of law for which we are fighting, angered middle-of-the-road Muslims and gave the extremists priceless fuel for their favourite narrative, "Islam under attack".

At the same time, we were crazily indulgent of some of the world's most dangerous Islamist radicals. Until 1998, Khalid al-Fawwaz, al-Qaeda's official press spokesman, operated, quite openly, from Dollis Hill – you could pop up on the Jubilee line, chat about the latest suicide bomb with him and fix a trip to Osama bin Laden's Afghan cave ... Bin Laden's "ambassador to Europe", Abu Qatada, also called London home. Al-Qaeda's senior commander, Abu Zubaydah, described him as the group's "most successful recruiter in Europe". He was not arrested until the year after 9/11. Not until two years after was another al-Qaeda recruitment channel, that run by Abu Hamza, closed down ... the security services explicitly advised ministers not to act against such people in the belief that they "would not bite the hand that fed" them, and "would keep terrorism off the streets of the UK" – if left in peace to plot terrorism on the streets of, say, New York. Those quotes are from MI5, in an official document from Qatada's deportation hearing.

[T]he policy of indulgence continues, in modified form. Influential security officials believe that we can somehow anoint "good" radicals and use them as a bulwark against the "bad" ones.

I do  not, to my knowledge anyway, have any Muslim friends but I certainly had several Muslim acquaintances over the years. Two come to mind:

A is a senior official in a major government department. He came to Canada (from Iraq) when he had just finished university. He took a MEng and PhD here, married and started a family (all girls as I recall) and a career and all that.

B is retired now but he owned a downtown convenience store. He came to Canada (from Syria?) but with a wife and a young child. He had a good degree but he couldn't afford to take additional Canadian degrees so he and his wife worked two jobs each and sunk all their money into the convenience store. It worked: he and his family prospered his sons (two or three) and their university classmates worked in the store – good lads, all, I think – and just a couple of years ago, when the last son graduated from university, B sold his store and he and his wife retired to a nice suburban home.

Both men told me similar stories. They thought themselves good Muslims but they rejected all of the radical, fundamentalist Islamist message. A rarely bothered with the Mosque because he objects to the way all the Ottawa mosques discriminate against women. He taught his daughters what he regards as the core tenets of Islam and he encourages them to obey all the sensible rules. He shared his story, when we were working in Geneva, or some place, over a nice dinner with good wine a few glasses of fine whisky. He liked to joke that he would stop drinking and running around when he, finally, made his Haj (pilgrimage) – which he planned to do when he got to be about 90!

B found the mosque less objectionable but he, too, rejected many of the cultural customs, from the ”old countries,” which he cannot find in the Quran – that includes e.g. head scarves.

Both men told me that they relished life in Canada; they relished being “free” - politically, economically, socially and culturally. They detested both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein but they also detested Bush for what they saw as unprovoked attacks on Muslim countries. They acknowledged that the USA defended Muslims in the Balkans but not, they both thought, out of anything like altruism.

Both A and B supported Canada's deployment to Afghanistan, including to Kandahar, because they saw the Taliban as a real threat. I suspect their enthusiasm waned as the mission dragged on and on and on.

Both men also felt put upon and “suspected” by other Canadians – officials and neighbours alike. I recall that A and a few others needed higher security clearances. There were a half dozen people, two of whom, including A required a very, very high clearance. A's colleague's clearance came in within a few months (I put a very high priority on both and I got three star level support for that) but A's took forever. He understood that it was harder to investigate his family background (Iraq) than the background of his colleague (India) but he suspected a reluctance to trust any Arab. I pooh-poohed the notion, but, secretly, I shared his suspicion.

My Muslim acquaintances valued – perhaps more than native born Canadians – their rights and freedoms and they were, as was I, incensed at the ways in which our fundamental rights were trampled upon in the wake of 9/11.

Benjamin Franklin (sometimes Thomas Jefferson) is often quoted as saying: ”Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

A, B and I all agree with that.

But A and B had no patience with what they both saw as the mollycoddling of Muslim extremists in the name of religious tolerance. They both counted themselves as Canadians, period. They refused to be Canadian Muslims or Muslim Canadians because no one ever classified me, for example, as a Canadian agnostic or an agnostic Canadian. Since I am just a plain vanilla Canadian so, A declared, was he – no more, no less.

I believe that we underestimate the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens who happen to be Muslims. Not all of them – just the vast majority. We ought to track down and silence the tiny minority of anti-Canadian, anti-civilized West radicals and we ought to assume that most of our Muslim neighbours cherish and will defend the same values we do.

Above all we ought not to try to buy security with liberty.

 

[Infanteer]

Wow - great post Edward.  Agree with all of it.

 

[Jed]

Great Post. I wish all of us natural born Canadians held this point of view.

 

[OldSolduer]

[

Great Post. I wish all of us natural born Canadians held this point of view.

I certainly hold that view. I've seen too many places and given too much to become complacent.

Good post Edward!