This is a guest post by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens
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For the past couple of days, the Guardian has been running scare stories about the Government’s Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) programme. Gleefully feeding Islamist propaganda about the government’s supposed demonisation of Muslims, it is an irresponsible and potentially dangerous attack.
PVE is a strand of the CONTEST strategy designed to fight terrorism, and a large part of the PVE strand is the Pathfinder Fund which, through local authorities, allocates funds to local organisations that they assess can help prevent people from becoming radicalised.
The main Guardian report focuses primarily on the use of information sharing agreements (ISA) which have been drawn up between the Metropolitan Police and two councils that receive PVE funding for certain projects. These ISAs specify that PVE funded projects can share with the police detailed personal information about innocent Muslims, including details about their sex life. Having got hold of two ISAs, one from Islington and one from Waltham Forest, the Guardian has presented the Prevent strategy as nothing more than a covert dirty tricks programme designed to create a police state for innocent Muslims.
Rather, these shockingly invasive ISAs are much more likely to be an aberration from what Prevent is in fact all about, and yet another example of the error of allowing the Police to take the lead in running this programme. Looking beyond the immediate hysteria (which the MCB have predictably spearheaded) it is important to keep the following in mind: so far, from a pool of hundreds of local councils and numerous PVE funded projects, the Guardian has presented us with two ISAs. If the newspaper can provide us with more evidence that the use of ISAs is in fact the rule rather than an aberration, I will be more than willing to retract my current stance that Prevent is by no means an intelligence gathering programme.
Ed Husain, director of the Quilliam Foundation, has found himself in a spot of bother over this after being quoted by the Guardian as saying
“It [Prevent] is gathering intelligence on people not committing terrorist offences. If it is to prevent people getting killed and committing terrorism, it is good and it is right.”
In this assessment, he has got one thing terribly wrong: the stated aims of Prevent make it clear it is not designed to do this, and detailed intelligence gathering is instead the purpose of another strand of CONTEST, namely ‘Pursue’. Prevent is not an attempt to subvert local community groups that are receiving Pathfinder money, and perpetuating the idea that it is can be hugely damaging. His failure to properly explain the nature of Prevent must be rectified.
Even more damaging was the article written today by Islamist enabler Robert Lambert, who, rather than criticising the Prevent strategy, tries to put the boot into Quilliam by suggesting that instead of them receiving any PVE money, it should instead go to his Islamist friends. Before a brief look at his article, here is a bit of background information on Mr. Lambert:
- As a leading light of the Metropolitan Police Muslim Contact Unit, he handed over the Finsbury Park mosque to, among others, Mohammed Sawalha. Described by the BBC as a ‘fugitive Hamas commander’, Sawalha was also a signatory to the Istanbul Declaration – a pro Hamas statement which not only rejected any possible peace settlements with Israel, but also included indirect support for attacks on British Naval vessels.
- According to the most recent documents, he is an employee of iEngage, a pro Islamist website headed by Mohammed Ali Harrath – a man who is currently the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for, according to the Interpol site, ‘counterfeiting/forgery, crimes involving the use of weapons/explosives, terrorism.’
In his piece today, Lambert suggests that instead of Quilliam, a far more suitable candidate would be Anas Altikriti, CEO of the Cordoba foundation. Identified last year as a problematic Islamist organisation by David Cameron, the Cordoba foundation recently sponsored an event in the Kensington and Chelsea town hall which was to showcase a video sermon by pro-al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al Awlaki (the sermon was pulled at the last minute only after immense pressure from the local council). Awlaki has also been identified by the US Department of Homeland Security as the spiritual leader of three of the 9/11 hijackers. The author of ‘44 Ways to Support Jihad’, his sermons enjoin Muslims to join al-Qaeda affiliated groups like Somalia’s al-Shabaab militia. Surely it is not unfair to ask how Lambert could possibly justify promoting a group that sponsors an Awlaki sermon? It is also worth noting that, despite the controversy about Awlaki’s virtual presence at the event, the front page of Tikriti’s Cordoba’s website still carries the ad for the event, in which Awlaki is described as an ‘Islamic scholar’.
Lambert also promotes Inayat Bunglawala as a viable alternative to Quilliam, surely it is just a coincidence that Inayat is also his colleague at iEngage…
There are a number of things wrong with Prevent, in particular how PVE funds have very often fallen into the wrong hands (many of them rather inexplicably, are friends and associates of Robert Lambert), but from what information is currently available there is no evidence to suggest that it is a wide ranging sinister programme to invade the privacy of innocent Muslims. Additionally, the Guardian should have seriously considered the ramifications of discrediting the Prevent strategy in the eyes of truly moderate Muslims, and they better have something better than the two ISAs they have so far come up with.
21 Comments
The report by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and the Guardian articles are not ‘Islamist’ inspired you decietful cretins, the report was authored by a Hindu. There is ample evidence that this agenda is has been conspired to surpress any innocent, law-abiding British Muslim who expresses and aligns himself with Islamic politics and opinion, whilst it aims to promote the apolitical, cultural, pacifist trends within the diversity of the Muslim community.
And you Centre for Social Cohesion lackies are just another aspect of this conspiracy, but as I have saaid before our Lord has promised to preserve his holistic Deen as delivered by the greatest of ‘Islamists’ the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh). Insha’Allah no doubt the IRR report will be circulated to many British Muslim institutions.
“They plan and they plot and Allah (God) has a plan and He (God) is the best of planners”. [Al-Qur'an 8:30]
Indeed the Lord is the best of planners and a terrible doom awaits Islamists and those who de-face Islam by accusing its prophet of being an ‘islamist’. And what exactly is ‘Islamic politics’?
I would suggest pickling it with some cornichons and baby onions… but, hey, Allah knows best.
Please provide this ample evidence.
What’s wrong with pacifism?
All religion is “cultural”.
Politics and religion are not the same as each other and should generally be kept apart from each other.
‘There is ample evidence that this agenda is has been conspired to surpress any innocent, law-abiding British Muslim who expresses and aligns himself with Islamic politics and opinion
Please provide this ample evidence.’
I consider myself a living breathing example of this, thats the underlying objective of this forum, this dishonest little outfit has been contrived to criminalise my legitimate opinion.
‘Politics and religion are not the same as each other and should generally be kept apart from each other.’
Ahhh now were getting to the crux of the matter…can you please enlighten us to where the concept of Caliph orginates, the first four caliphs comfortably fused Islam and politics, were they incorrect in doing so???
What you are talking about?
You write that “this forum, this dishonest little outfit has been contrived to criminalise my legitimate opinion.”
Where and how have we tried to “criminalise your legitimate opinion”? We don’t even know what your opinions are!!!
Yaseen – which of your legitimate opinions are being criminalised? Or are you just hooked on playing poor little victim of a grand conspiracy.
Yaseen – I trust that you are aware that there is a difference between criticism and criminalisation?
‘…or are you just hooked on playing poor little victim of a grand conspiracy.’
A powerful committee of MPs is likely to hold a formal hearing into allegations that a government anti-extremism programme is being used to gather information on innocent Muslims. [Guardian 19th October 2009]
Obviously there are the honest few who believe there is some kind of ‘conspiracy’ that needs investigating. Criticise I accept but criminalise and defame I do not, this forum is guilty of both, your Friday caption feature is just one example of the malicious intent, abuse and religous mockery that is evident to the neutral reader across this site. I am not of HT and have aways challenged thier isolationist and one-tracj views, but if HT are the conveyer belt to extremeism as you always claim then this forum is nothing short of a conveyor belt to Islamophobia and incitement of hate towards Muslims.
Caption Competitions are run all over the world in the spirit of humour and light heartedness. Laughter is the best medicine. Why do you seem to have such a problem with that?
Direct, political and earthly powers associated with the Caliphate evolved considerably later than the principally religious functions of the Caliphs. Indeed, the emergence of the the Islamic hereditary state(s) with, in particular, the Abbasid dynasty, highlights this contradiction between original religious function of the Caliph and the needs of earthly rule.
I would take a look at the ways in which the role of Caliph developed in this middle period quite closely. The contrasts and contradictions between original religiously orientated leadership and latter more mundane leadership roles is fundamental to understanding the history of the latter Caliphate, before its effective extinction in the Mongol invasions of the 14th Century.
I would suggest, Yaseen, that you avail yourself of more than the Bumper Beano Pop-Up Book of Islamic History if you want to tussle on these issues.
The notion that Islam is quintessentially the articulation of politics on the basis of a distorted set of religious dogma (aka Islamism) is a modern aberration quite unknown to earlier and very orthodox Muslims.
TO fisk the first bit:
MUSTAPHA:
ABU FARIS:
YASEEN:
Your paranoid, narcissistic fantasies were not what I had in mind when I asked for Mustapha’s “ample evidence” of a conspiracy, as a matter of fact.
Yaseen – I will ask again, which of your views are being criminalised?
264u
Though you seem to be deluding into thinking the editors of Spittoon arent going to face any doom for promoting books abusing the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wasalaam and the Quran, mocking the niqab/sunnah, mocking Muslims and making halal what Allah SWT made haram.(homosexuality)
Abu Faris
No. Islam is wahy.
Yaseen
This is important to note. Spitoon claim the only people who oppose tehm in the Muslim community are “Islamists” when in fact its pretty much every vaguely religious Muslim who knows of them including those who have no time for HT. This is clear from reaction to Spittoons posts on Sunni Sufi sites.
Are you suggesting here that all “vaguely religious Muslims” are also unconscious supporters of the extremist views of HT and the various offshoots and fronts of the Jamaat and the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Britain today – and thereby oppose our general stance against extremist Islamism?
Some context would be appreciated.
And you clearly do not understand the word “culture”.
In fact, do you reach for your revolver whenever you hear the word?
It’s that troll again…
Crikey. A Herman Goering quote! Abu Faris remains full of surprises!
Ya al-Qanaas,
I aim to please!