Islam21c Articulating Islam in the 21st Century
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The Muslim community has been diagnosed with the problem of “radicalisation” by those outside of it, with David Cameron calling it “the greatest struggle of our generation.”
But is it real?
This panel will explore and critique the unstated presumptions of the rhetoric and sensationalism surrounding the usage of words like “radical” and “extremism”, from the various theories to the actual statistical significance of the stories of Muslims allegedly involved “terrorism” using an evidence-based approach.
Having said that, what are the genuine tasks before us when it comes to safeguarding children from an authentic, community-led understanding of “extremism”?
Islam21c Chief Editor Dr Salman Butt hosts the discussion with the following panellists:
Dr Rizwaan Sabir — a Lecturer in Criminology in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Liverpool John Moores University, specialising in the study of UK counter-terrorism, counterinsurgency, and political Islam.
Asim Qureshi — Research Director at CAGE, and author of the book ‘Rules of the Game: Detention, Deportation, Disappearance’.
Sh Dr Haitham al-Haddad — UK-based Islamic jurist and member of the Islamic Council of Europe.
Source: www.islam21c.com
The views expressed on Islam21c and its connected channels do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation.
There will never be an end to extremism and terrorism as long as Muslim children keep on attending state schools with non-Muslim teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers during their developmental periods. Muslim children must develop their cultural, spiritual and linguistic identities before they are exposed to wider world, otherwise, they would be lost in western jungle. It is a crime against humanity to send Muslim children to state schools with non-Muslim teachers. Children from minority groups, especially the Muslims, are exposed to the pressure of racism, multiculturalism and bullying. They suffer academically, culturally and linguistically: a high proportion of children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are leaving British schools with low grades or with no qualification. The demand for state funded Muslim schools is nothing to do with integration or segregation. It is purely an educational issue.
None of 7/7 bombers and British Muslim youths who are in Syria and Iraq are the product of Muslim schools. They are the product of British schooling which is the home of institutional racism with chicken racist native teachers. 7/7 bombers have been radicalised in the context of racist schools rather than in Pakistan. Imams and Masajid are not the brainwashers of Muslim youths. It is state schools who have been mis-educating and de-educating Muslim children for the last 60 years. The media for the last 15 years have targeted Muslims as a threat to British life. Many of 9/11 and 7/7 attackers were not from the poor, down trodden, under-educated and alienated sectors of society but were well-educated, middle to upper class and from stable family backgrounds. Muslim youths suspected of carrying out blast across India, have not been educated in Madrassas but western qualified and had respectable jobs. All terrorists and extremists are home grown. Not a single terrorist is an immigrant, second or third generation Muslim youths become an extremist because they were mis-educated and de-educated by western education system. Most terrorists( as 7th July and Lee Rigby cases have shown) are home grown traitors. So no amount of “vetting” is going to stop that.
It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views. It is dangerously deceptive and misleading to address text books and discuss them out of their historical, cultural and linguistic context. It is not wrong to teach children that Jews are committing the same cruelty in Palestine what German did to them before or during Second World War. It is not wrong to teach children that anti-social behaviour, drinking, drugs, homosexuality, sex before marriage, teenage pregnancies and abortions are western values and Islam is against all such sins. This does not mean that Muslim schools teach children to hate westerners, Jews and homosexuals.
The British establishment is wrong in thinking that Imams are to blame for extremism. Imams are not solution to the problem for extremism. Extremism is nothing to do with Imams. Extremism is not created from abroad, it is coming from within. Britain fails to help Muslim communities feel part of British society. Race trouble is being predicted by the Daily Express, because of an ethnic boom in UK major cities. Muslim communities need imams for the solutions of their needs and demands in their own native languages. Muslim parents would like to see their children well versed in Standard English and to go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. The fact is that majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because monolingual teachers are not capable to teach Standard English to bilingual Muslim children. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.
Terrorism and sexual grooming is nothing to do with Masajid, Imams and Muslim schools. Those Muslim youths who have been involved in terrorism and sexual grooming are the product of western education system which makes a man stupid, selfish and corrupt. They find themselves cut off from their cultural heritage, literature and poetry. They suffer from identity crises and I blame British schooling. My argument is that violent radicalisation is not the consequence of religious radicalisation, even if it often takes the same paths and borrows the same paradigms. Religious fundamentalism exists, of course, and it poses considerable societal problems, because it rejects values based on individual choice and personal freedom. But it does not necessarily lead to political violence.
The three Jihadi Muslim girls and the Jihadi John were in a wrong place at a wrong time in a non-Muslim school with non-Muslim teachers during their developmental periods. They suffer from identity crises. They are unable to enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. They were not radicalised at a non-Muslim school, says principal. But the school with non-Muslim teachers are responsible to create identity crises. Muslim children must be in state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Why should we be surprised? They have gone through a rotten education system where there is no consequences for anything and they have grown up in a rather pathetic, wet nation with a liberal criminal justice system which actually seems to view law upholding people with pure contempt. Jihadi John has been identified, tried and convicted by the media. Surely this would prejudice any criminal case against him. In my opinion, he was also radicalised by MI5. To stop radicalisation of teens we need to find out the cause. We will get no where if all we do is just condemn but to actually stop this we need to find the cause and stop immediately, that includes All the way from extremist imams to extremist family members AND the pressure and the factor some of the security forces have upon teens.
The objection that radicals are motivated by the “suffering” experienced by Muslims who were formerly colonised, or victims of racism or any other sort of discrimination, US bombardments, drones, Orientalism, and so on, would imply that the revolt is primarily led by victims. But the relationship between radicals and victims is more imaginary than real.
Those who perpetrate attacks in Europe are not inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, Libya or Afghanistan. They are not necessarily the poorest, the most humiliated or the least integrated. The fact that 25% of Jihadis are converts shows that the link between radicals and their “people” is also a largely imaginary construct.
Revolutionaries almost never come from the suffering classes. In their identification with the proletariat, the “masses” and the colonised, there is a choice based on something other than their objective situation. Very few terrorists or Jihadis advertise their own life stories. They generally talk about what they have seen of others’ suffering. It was not Palestinians who shot up the Bataclan.
Up until the mid-1990s, most international Jihadis came from the Middle East and had fought in Afghanistan prior to the fall of the communist regime there in 1992. Afterwards, they returned to their home countries to take part in jihad, or took the cause abroad. These were the people who mounted the first wave of “globalised” attacks (the first attempt on the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, against the US embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the US Navy destroyer Cole in 2000).
This first generation of Jihadis was mentored by the likes of Bin Laden, Ramzi Yousef and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. But from 1995 onwards, a new breed began to develop – known in the west as the “home grown terrorist”.
“How do we stop young Muslims becoming radicalised?” is the question we now continually ask. But it’s a deeply misleading question because it points us in the wrong direction. Why? Because it contains a hidden assumption that it is radical ideas, specifically Islamic theological ideas, that are the root cause of turning a young lad from West Yorkshire into an Isis suicide bomber in Iraq. According to the radicalisation hypothesis, it’s conservative Islam and the dangerous ideas contained in the Qur’an that motivate murderous behaviour. Have you asked yourself why people are becoming fanatical or being radicalised? Yes. To want to go and kill people I suspect they have been brainwashed by clever, manipulative, evil extremists. Blamed to some extent on warmongering western politicians like Bush and Blair who think removing evil dictators can lead to stable democracy. Where did isis spring from? Not in Waltham Forest.
The Old Testament was found to be more than twice as violent as the Quran.
An analysis into whether the Quran is more violent than the Bible found killing and destruction occur more frequently in the Christian texts than the Islamic.
Investigating whether the Quran really is more violent than its Judeo-Christian counterparts, software engineer Tom Anderson processed the text of the Holy books to find which contained the most violence.
In a blog post, Mr Anderson explains: “The project was inspired by the ongoing public debate around whether or not terrorism connected with Islamic fundamentalism reflects something inherently and distinctly violent about Islam compared to other major religions.”
Using text analytics software he had developed, named Odin Text, he analysed both the New International Version of both the Old and New Testaments as well as an English-language version of the Quran from 1957.
It took just two minutes for his software to read and analyse the three books.
Islam is in fact a religion that promotes peace and understanding among people of all faiths, and it strongly prohibits all forms of violence and aggression against all people regardless of their faith or race.
Islam Prohibits Violence and Aggression, and stands for Peace and Justice.
Islam clearly prohibits all kinds and forms of aggression and violence against anyone, except in self-defence. Islam is a practical religion, meant to be implemented in every aspect of our life. Therefore, it realizes the fact that a person who commits aggression and violence against others will not cease these actions unless they are deterred by similar actions taken against them.
Islam also places very high importance on justice, and allows for aggressors and unjust people be punished accordingly, unless they repent before they are brought to justice. At the same time, Islam encourages people to forgive those who have wronged them whenever possible.
Terror is the biggest business today at home and abroad. Everyone is a beneficiary. The government gets more clout and more powers over the lives of its hapless subjects through new terror laws and activation of old ones in an atmosphere where no one dares to question the motives of the politicians over the vital issue of “security”. Security forces get immunity for illegal acts and crimes for which they win medals, rewards, promotions and huge funds with no accountability attached.
Newspapers and TV channels improve their circulation and ratings sensationalising real and imaginary terror stories with total impunity as no one would dare question their rightful concern for our safety and security.
Islam is restoring traditional British values such as shared responsibility and duty, a former archbishop has said. Rowan Williams said that Muslims had brought back “open, honest and difficult public discussion” in one of their “greatest gifts” to Britain. He used a speech to criticise sections of the press for portraying Muslims as “un-British” and complained of “illiteracy” about religion among figures in government. He told the Living Islam Festival in Lincolnshire that Christianity and Islam were shifting British values back towards the community. He said that Britain was an “argumentative democracy” where “we are not just individual voters ticking boxes but individuals and communities engaging in open, honest and difficult public discussion. One of the greatest gifts of the Muslim community to the UK has been that they have brought that back to the people.” Asked if he meant that Islam was rejuvenating British values, Dr Williams said: “Yes. I’m thinking of the way in which, for example, in Birmingham we have seen a local parish and a mosque combining together to provide family services and youth activities, both acting out of a very strong sense that this is what communities ought to do. ” “It’s really important that we respect and try to understand diversity of conscience and belief and conviction in our environment,” he said. “These are not just about what makes us British, they’re about what makes us human.”
The Famous English playwright George Bernard Shaw said: The world much needs a man with Mohammad’s bright thinking. If a man like Mohammad were to assume The rule of modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems and bring peace and happiness to it.. Almost all greatest thinkers praised Muhammad (PBUH) and his religion, if you cannot agree with them then you have your head buried deep in the dirt or your an intellectual dwarf have nothing against dwarves that’s how they were created but an intellectual dwarf you created yourself. One of the black companion of Prophet Muhammad named Bilal holds high status in Islam even though he was previously a slave . Prophet Muhammad ended all status and economic differences and taught the people about equal rights. Those who abuse and curse Islam are the ones who do not want to treat people equally and want to enjoy privilege by amassing wealth through blood sucking capitalism, and they are the ones who made fortune from the slave trading and i saw their grand sons in Paris train stopping a black man from stepping into train.
A report by the Institute for Community Cohesion found that native parents were deserting some schools after finding their children out numbered by pupils from ethnic minorities. Schools in parts of England are becoming increasingly segregated. The study focused on 13 local authorities. Many of the schools and colleges are segregated and this was generally worsening over recent years. This is RACISM because British society is the home of institutional racism. My statement regarding Muslim schools where there is no place for non-Muslim child or a teacher is based on educational process and not on racism. Muslim children need Muslim teachers during their developmental periods. For higher studies and research, Muslim teacher is not a priority.
Native Brits must learn to respect and tolerate those who are different. Muslim community in all western countries need Masajid, state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers, halal meat, sharia laws, time of for Friday afternoon prayers in the Masjid, two religious official holidays per year and Muslim cemeteries. Stop treating foreigners like garbage and they will stop ruining your precious country. Why did you let them in in the first place if you didn’t want them here? They left everything in their countries because of your promises. Are you so anxious to please that you can’t say “no”? I would love to see you go to a foreign land where you don’t have any friends, you don’t even know anyone and you don’t speak the language, and start from scratch. I would just LOVE to watch you do that. Let them integrate and stop segregating them. What I want is people being nice to each other. I don’t care about race.
I have been campaigning for state funded Muslim schools for the last 47 years. I set up the first Muslim school in London in 1981. Now there are 188 schools educating approximately 10% Muslim pupils and only 28 schools are state funded. I would like to see each and every Muslim child in a state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers. I hope my dream would come true one day. Muslim children must develop their cultural. linguistic and spiritual identity before they are exposed to wider society, otherwise, they would be lost in western jungle. In education, there should be a choice and at present it is denied to the Muslim community. In the late 80s and early 90s, when I floated the idea of Muslim community schools, I was declared a “school hijacker” by an editorial in the Newham Recorder newspaper East London. This clearly shows that the British media does not believe in choice and diversity in the field of education and has no respect for those who are different.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. The whole world belongs to Muslims. It is a crime against humanity to send children to non-Muslim schools with non-Muslim teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Muslim children in state schools with non-Muslim teachers are not in a position to develop positive self-confidence and self-esteem.
Indiscipline, incivility, binge drinking, drug addiction, gun and knife crimes, teenage pregnancies and abortion are part and parcel of British schooling. These are the reasons why majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. Only less than 10% attend Muslim schools and more than 90% keep on attending state and church schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.
There are hundreds of state primary and secondary schools where Muslim pupils are in majority. In my opinion all such schools may be opted out to become Muslim Academies. This mean the Muslim children will get a decent education. Muslim schools turned out balanced citizens, more tolerant of others and less likely to succumb to criminality or extremism. Muslim schools give young people confidence in who they are and an understanding of Islam’s teaching of tolerance and respect which prepares them for a positive and fulfilling role in society. Muslim schools are attractive to Muslim parents because they have better discipline and teaching Islamic values. Children like discipline, structure and boundaries. Bilingual Muslim children need Bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods, who understand their needs and demands.
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
4 days now and no comments? strange……..