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Counter Terrorism News CTN Team Member 09/11/2009
Arun Kundnani clearly started writing ‘Spooked!’ with his final conclusions already firmly decided. His main arguments are only flimsily supported by the little evidence he adduces whilst other possible conclusions, often more convincing, are either ignored or dismissed out-of-hand. He then uses the accusations he makes, weakly substantiated though they are, to justify far-reaching conclusions; Prevent should abandon attempts to challenge non-violent extremism and that it would be beneficial to return to discredited 1990s models of multiculturalism.
One is left wondering what Kundwala wants, beyond attacking Prevent. He criticises it for focusing on Muslim populations, saying that it turns Muslims into a “suspect community”, and yet he condemns attempts to “map” Britain’s Muslim communities,[i] the very work that would be necessary for radicalisation to be targeted. He also condemns Prevent for creating mistrust within society[ii] and yet insinuates sinister motives behind police efforts to “foster closer relationships with local service providers” and “’promote trust and confidence’ in relation to Prevent.”[iii] He reveals some matters of concern, for example the extent to which service providers receiving Prevent-funding are required to collect information[iv], but then fails to provide evidence for this data being used as part of a spying programme. Indeed, there seems to be more confusion surrounding this matter than evidence of a conspiracy; Kundnani himself states: “Many interviewees were unclear as to who had access to the data they collected in their Prevent work.”[v]
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Counter Terrorism News CTN Team Member 25/08/2009
Rather than looking at theories about the ‘causes of radicalisation’ (which it deems to be spurious given that it is impossible to determine whether they are instrumental or just present), this report attempts to address the ‘radicalising agents’ that are present across cases of radicalisation (p.3) — a goal that in itself is reasonable and potentially useful. However, many of the means through which this report attempts to achieve this are somewhat doubtful. For the purposes of study, the report chooses to focus on Muslim organisations in the UK and splits them according to ‘non-political religious groups, religious and political groups and non-religious political groups’, whilst admitting that ‘few groups fit neatly into one category and often move between them over time’ (p.3).
From the outset then, the reasons behind the particular framework used are unclear, particularly when the only elaboration given for using them is the difficulties inherent in the framework’s application. In addition to this, Muslim organizations also appear to be the only ‘radicalising agent’ that is developed at all. Despite spending a good proportion of the report analysing terror plots in the UK case by case in order to be able to pinpoint key agents that link them all together (which in itself is a useful and productive task, although necessarily fairly repetitive), it fails to develop the linking factors it then locates: key places, charismatic leadership, relationship links, experiences and stated/assumed grievances.
Instead, the report directs its energies towards an overly brief discussion of the various Muslim organizations in the UK. Its use of primary literature or evidence in support of the proscriptions made is insufficient and, given the brevity of the analysis, it overlooks any of the finer nuances regarding each group. This is evident in some of the inaccurate comments made towards a few of the movements covered — particularly the religious ones:
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The Independent Ziauddin Sardar 07/08/2009
The internet has rewired Islam. The web is now at the core of all Muslim communities and performs a central role in Islamic expression. It is being used to reinterpret Islam; and Muslims themselves are being transformed.
The "i" in iMuslims, says Gary Bunt in this fascinating study, is not simply the internet. It also represents repacking of information on Islam, new pathways of interactivity and interconnection among Muslims, and an innovative online universe. A plethora of travellers on the religious path - scholars, students, activists, mystics – are developing new affinities that go far beyond traditional boundaries. Cyber Islam is challenging and mutating a conventional understanding of Muslim identity.
But not everything is new. This "Cyber Islamic Environment" has strong historic resonance. The new networks are not unlike traditional networks during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, when religious knowledge evolved as an open-source system. Just like Wikipedia, experts and ordinary people collaborated to develop a consensus on Islamic knowledge.
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City Journal (USA) Theodore Dalrymple 16/07/2009
What is the cause of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist violence, and why do a few people become suicide bombers? These are the urgent questions that Kenan Malik, a respected and intelligent British journalist of Muslim origin but secular convictions, sets out to answer in From Fatwa to Jihad. It would be simplistic to ascribe the violence to Islam itself by citing those verses from the Koran that seem to justify or even require it. Selective quotation does not explain why extremism is the province of the young, and why, for example, the first generation of Muslim immigrants to Britain (and elsewhere) were not at all attracted to it.
The merit of Malik’s book is that it seeks the answer in modern conditions. Even in Islamic countries, fundamentalists are not medieval throwbacks, however they may see themselves. They derive their ideas, even if they do not acknowledge it, at least as much from Lenin, Gramsci, and Mao as from Mohammed. They claim to want to return to seventh-century Arabia, but this is no more realistic or sincere than the wish of Victorian admirers of the Gothic to return to the Middle Ages.
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Pickled Politics Sunny 15/07/2009
So the oxymoronically named ‘Centre for Social Cohesion’ has published a report on the BNP (pdf), which Rumbold mentions below. It’s nice the British neo-cons are paying some attention to white-extremism but the report makes one glaring omission. Spotted it yet?
The report plenty of activity by the BNP on messageboards and blogs. It lists some vile comments made by BNP supporters and is rather obsessed by the gimp a.k.a. Lee Barnes. The report’s authors could also have spent their time better transcribing outrageous things Nick Griffin has said in speeches littered all over YouTube, rather than that of some anonymous commenters on random blogs. In fact I think Pickled Politics/eGov did a better job in attacking the BNP with our 85 questions directed at the BNP.
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Comment is Free Andrew Brown 14/07/2009
Why don't Muslim women work outside the home? The Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities in this country contain many of the poorest and least employed women in Britain. Why are they both poor and unemployed? Is it racism, or religion, or some combination of the two?
A report from the Quilliam Foundation dismisses both these simple answers and suggests some complex and worrying ones. The statistic that really jumped out at me was the extent to which marriage has become a means of immigration to this country. A study by Professor Angela Dale, of Manchester University, cited here suggests that 50% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women and 40% of men in this country married spouses from overseas between 1998 and 2005. It seems reasonable to suppose that most of these women come from poor, rural families, and those are exactly the ones with the highest rates of female exclusion from the job market here.
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The Daily Telegraph (UK) Nicholas Shakespeare 18/06/2009
The history of religion is a history of schisms. You can make a case that every great religion is a heresy of some previous one: exactly as Christianity is a heresy of Judaism, which itself is a reworking of Ancient Babylonian myths, so Islam may be viewed as a sub-heresy of Christianity. In the sibling rivalry that exists between Jews, Christians and Muslims, we are all descendants of Abraham one way or another, like three children competing for a father’s attention. What we need to learn is how to get on with each other without resorting to violence – a massively tall order, as these books reveal.
Faith is a dangerous thing. “God, grant me unbelief,” may be the reaction of some readers to Reza Aslan’s clear-headed overview of the “cosmic war” in which we have been engaged since September 11 2001. “This crusade,” pause, “this war on terror,” pause, “is going to take a while.” With those words, George W Bush set the tone for the first global conflict of our century. Aslan, an Iranian scholar who arrived in the United States in 1979, returns us to the dictionary. “Crusade (noun): One of the medieval wars of religion waged by Christians against Muslims.”
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