Good to see further evidence that our new broom Brown government has really understood the threat from the global jihad and is taking firm measures to deal with it. We have already heard that it intends to win hearts and minds in a campaign to address the wellsprings of Islamist extremism. The Observer reports an early initiative. The British Council is slashing its funding of EU countries by £20 million - a tenth of its total government grant - and reallocating it to the Middle East to bridge the ‘widening gap of trust’ between the UK and Muslim states.
Iraq, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are among ‘high priority’ regions that will also receive a 50 per cent boost in support for projects to steer Muslims away from extremism. And as the council’s physical presence in Europe is cut back, public access buildings, some recently renovated at spectacular cost, will close.You cannot succeed unless you enter into risky areas and are prepared to deal with them,’ Cathy Stephens, acting director of British Council operations, told The Observer. ‘We are in transformational mood,’ she said, acknowledging that, while security is an issue, the ultimate aim is to win over the hearts and minds of men and women in predominantly young populations across the Arab world’.
Promising – until this:
‘We will, of course, tailor our programmes … and if it is felt we are doing something wrong in those countries, we will listen.’
Ah, so far from transforming the assumptions of Muslim extremists, it’s we in Britain who have to be transformed by Muslim extremists! How silly of us to imagine it might be the other way round!
Next, Shiv Malik in the Sunday Times tells us that members of a radical Muslim group that Tony Blair promised to ban after the July 7 bombings have set up two schools in Britain to educate primary age children.
The Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation, a registered charity that runs private schools in Haringey, north London, and in Slough in Berkshire, was established two years ago by female members of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Between them, the schools educate more than 100 children. A 2005 Ofsted inspection report for the school in Slough was glowing about its work, stating: ‘The school’s provision for the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is very good.’
The schools’ curriculum contains elements of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideology, which calls for the union of all Muslim states into a worldwide empire, the khilafah (caliphate). It is banned in Germany, Russia and throughout the Middle East because of its antisemitism and its stated aim to establish a global Islamic state. It also calls for the destruction of Israel and the reunion of all lands that were ever under Muslim rule — including parts of southern Spain — through jihad if necessary.
Until a month after the July 7 bombings, when the group became far more cautious following Blair’s pledge, it was possible to obtain antisemitic literature on the group’s British websites. One leaflet stated: ‘The Jews are a poisoned dagger thrust into the heart of the Islamic [nation], an evil cancerous gland which spreads deep within the Islamic countries.’ A short paragraph with the heading ‘What can Muslims in Britain do to re-establish the khilafah’ went on to state that Muslims in Britain ‘should not become integrated into the corrupt western society and accept their diseased notions of democracy freedom and capitalism’.
The government not only refuses to ban Hizb ut Tahrir (which held a mass meeting in London yesterday to promote itself) so that it continues to recruit to the jihad against the west thousands of Muslim students on British campuses, but it is now allowing it to inculcate tiny children into its seditious and ultimately murderous ideas — with Ofsted’s seal of approval. The Tories’ David Davis got it right in the Sunday Times when he called forHuT to be banned:
HuT went on to say that ‘the track record of Hizb ut-Tahrir over 50 years of its existence has been one of consistent nonviolent political activism’. That is a truly extraordinary example of double-talk. Take just a few recent examples. The British suicide bombers who attacked Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv in 2003 had Hizb ut-Tahrir contacts. Terrorist fixer Mohammed Babar (who turned and testified against the Crevice July 7 bombers) was a member. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid was influenced by HuT preachers. And Omar Bakri Mohammed, a former Hizb ut-Tahrir leader – now deported to Lebanon – believes that 7/7 was the fault of the British people and describes the 9/11 bombers as the ‘magnificent 19’. And that is just in this country.
Across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia, HuT preaches a virulent brand of Islamic extremism. Senior Al-Qaeda leaders, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were members of HuT. Its UK website boasts that it is a ‘global party’, directly associating itself with the acts of its branches abroad. In response to the recent attempted attacks in London and Glasgow, HuT confined itself to this general legalistic comment: ‘We reiterate our position that Islam does not allow the harming of innocent civilians.’ So were those targeted at Glasgow airport and the Haymarket ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty’ civilians? This deliberate ambiguity is telling. Why does HuT fail to condemn these attacks as the barbaric crimes they were, aimed indiscriminately at civilians? Why does it allow comments on its website describing the attacks as a ‘welcoming treat for the newly formed Brown cabinet’?
Why indeed is the newly formed Brown Cabinet so impervious to this threat? But then much of Britain is still sleepwalking off the edge of the cliff. While Little Green Footballs reports that
A satirical musical about Islamist terrorism and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has sparked protests in Britain, with critics blasting it as tasteless. ‘Jihad: The Musical,’ which features songs including ‘I wanna be like Osama’ and is described as ‘a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism,’ is on at the Edinburgh Fringe festival this month. But a petition has been launched on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Downing Street website. ‘We the undersigned petition the prime minister to condemn the tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims in “Jihad The Musical,” says the online protest.
there are no Downing Street petitions protesting about the tastelessness of another play being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, which as the Independent on Sunday tells us delivers the message:
We have nothing to fear from al-Qa’ida. Christian fundamentalists are the real extremist threat. That’s the message from the writers of a new play being shown at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. Cash in Christ, a sing-along play satirising the modern capitalist ‘mega- church’, is arguably one of the most controversial productions in a Fringe with the largest satirical content in living memory…
The writers said that, while there is public discussion about the dangers of radical Islamic groups, the influence of the Christian far right is underestimated. ‘I’ve been very sensitive to extremists in other religions, particularly Islam, being demonised,’ said Badham. ‘I find the Christian right groups that are enormously powerful in our own culture a larger numerical threat than extreme Islam. They are somehow removed from public criticism, and that is one of the reasons we did the show. Bush is from the religious right and he has the bomb; that terrifies me far more than the potential of other extremists to get their hands on nuclear weapons.’
Yeah right; Bush intends to nuke London and force the survivors to convert to Christianity.
Welcome to tartanistan.
