Posted on 07/11/2005 4:25:05 PM PDT by milestogo
EDITORIAL: Backlash against expatriate Muslims?
Four mosques in the UK have been hit by vandals after the July 7 acts of terrorism in London. Similar attacks have been directed against the Muslim community in New Zealand. The London police have arrested three suspects “unconnected with the underground bombings” from Heathrow Airport under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, while one Pakistani allegedly carrying a map of the London underground was arrested from another airport outside London. The police reported incidents of abusive language used against Muslims in the streets and Pakistani MPs from the Labour Party have expressed fears about a rise in hate crimes in the UK in the aftermath of the July 7 acts of terrorism.
The Muslims in the UK are rightly worried about their future in the country. The British press has trawled the reports prepared after the 2004 Al Qaeda bombing in Spain to report that Al Qaeda was busy recruiting Muslim youth from British colleges, focusing on engineers and science students alienated by the “double standards” in the Islam-related foreign policies of the West in general and the United States in particular. The target community are arrivals from Africa and the Middle East as well as the second-generation naturalised Britons whose ancestors had arrived from Pakistan. All over the world, airports may have been alerted to passengers having Muslim names and it might become difficult for non-expatriate Pakistanis to travel outside Pakistan.
This is not a satisfactory state of affairs. The July 7 attacks in the UK have been roundly condemned by the governments of the Islamic world, including Pakistan. Implicit in this condemnation is the fear that their nationals might face unfair persecution in the West. Will the governments in the West keep this fact in mind while investigating the 7/7 incident and while mounting preventive measures against a repetition of the acts that Al Qaeda keeps threatening? The British government has already held out assurances that it will not target any community but will “keep all options open” while trying to locate the terrorists behind the 7/7 mischief. The Muslim community in the UK is expecting the worst. TV images of Muslims (they looked like conservative Pakistanis from their dress and beards) shown on the BBC in the aftermath of 7/7 were quite unsettling. They looked worried and no doubt expected reprisals any moment.
Is there more to be done to prevent the backlash against our expatriate community abroad? Islamabad has made the right statements and there is no doubt that every word in them was meant. But did all the political parties issue such “calming” statements? One columnist in Daily Times has noted that most of the parties have either not clearly condemned the 7/7 act or have hedged their condemnations with qualifiers that may not help Pakistanis living in the UK. The religious parties are either in denial about it or have expatiated on the possibility of “someone other than the Muslims” having done it. The “oracle of Sindh”, Pir Pagaro, has actually announced that the bombings were possibly staged to trap the Muslims. TV programmes have shown discussions repeating the old line that the West must pay for the policies it has pursued towards the Muslims, who are described as “mazloom” (persecuted) and otherwise much put upon.
There are nearly two million Muslims in the UK, nearly four million in Germany and five million in France. After what has happened since 9/11, these countries and their neighbours have betrayed signs of popular support to politicians who think that stern action should be taken against the expatriate Muslims and their radical religious culture. The UK has passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which makes arrest and detention of suspects legal, and other European states are thinking of laws on the same lines. In these circumstances, and given the fact that an outrageous act has been committed on 7/7, what should the Muslims in their homelands do to lessen the danger to which their expatriate brethren are exposed? One must accept the fact that here in Pakistan no one has accepted the “facts” revealed by the judicial process about the functioning of the mosques in the West, and most discussants on TV and the press have continued to rely on the old rhetoric of “double standards” to avoid feeling morally responsible for Al Qaeda terrorism.
It is time to change tack while talking about the Islamists and their hardline stance in the West. The three mosques in Paris that have served as the watering hole of the “sleeper cells” of Al Qaeda, the Al Quds mosque in Hamburg from where the dreaded 19 of Al Qaeda flew out to the US for the 9/11 bombings, and the infamous Finnsbury mosque in London from where Al Masari loosed his Al Qaeda rhetoric on scared Britons, should be accepted as samples of extremism that have crept into our expatriate community. Indeed, the truth is that expatriate Pakistanis have become more radicalised and extreme in their religious views than their brethren in Pakistan. The activities and rhetoric of the London-based Hizb al Tahrir in Pakistan will bear this out. At the present juncture, all efforts must be made to help the Western states, including the US, avoid choosing a radically anti-Muslim option through their electoral process. It is no longer wise to adhere to the old “double standards” line. Our communities living in the West are at risk and they can be secured against persecution only if we carefully select the messages we send out to the West through the media.
One last point. Muslims must acknowledge the resilience and democratic strength of the Western societies under attack by extremists and help strengthen these rather than weaken them. Londoners, it must be admitted, have shown tremendous calm and wisdom in the face of adversity by not succumbing to racism and anger against the Muslims in the city, as have Britons in the UK in general. That is the hallmark of a great, open, multi-racial and multi-cultural society. *
Good news.
What "open, multi racial, multi cultural " society? the Muslims want their own isolationist pre-historic culture and just can't handle the "modern " world.
NOW the Muslims are in an uproar? How about at 9-11? How about in Spain? How about Hammas? Yeah, like I really want to hear their sorry butts complain about "moderation and calm" now. Run for your lives or tell your Terrorist "brothers" to get lost! "Moderate is Mush" when it comes to Muslims!
(Good thing I don't have strong feelings about this.ha.)
I feel just horrible I tell ya. LOL
Wow that must have really been painful! Those poor #$%^&^% #%$%$ towel-headed%4@#^%^%%$ #^%&* mudslimes.
Here's to our stalwart British allies who actually oppose terror, and are willing to lay down their lives in Iraq to try and keep the world safe from people like the 7/7 murderers. I pray that the terrorist-coddling segment of the British population never take power...
What this tells me is that even punk kids can figure out where the blame lies.
Vandalism is itself cowardly but here bespeaks a
greater awareness than is shown by some governments.
the problem and it's a big problem is a matter of assimilation by these pre-historic fools... they make a conscious choice not to assimilate to wherever they immigrate (usually illegally) to... aside from that, the EU should be renamed to the MEU (middle-east union) because that's what it has become and native european ambivalence, complacency, and multi-culti mentality has allowed it to happen... now their very atrocious liberalism is going to haunt them for a long time... not only that, it has handcuffed their abilities to go out and prosecute those that are responsible and stop the flood of sub-human islamists to infiltrate their european centers of living...
Oh the cruelity of vandalism, all retaliation should be done in the Muslime tradition, by beheadings and homicide bombers.
WOOHOO!
They should worry everywhere they spread their unwelcome crap.
And then they should oscillate.
12 times!
At precisely 11:11, in Albuquerque.
Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:
No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
Where It's 9-11 All the Time...
Click the picture...
I'd hate to see what the Mohammedans call vandalism.
OMG!!!!
Please tell me this is not true!!!!!
It wasn't spray paint, was it? Oh, Please tell me it wansn't spray paint!!!! Did they use bad words?????
Oh, the humanity!!! Please let there be no vandalism against the Religion of Peace!! Left unchecked, this could lead to rolls of toilet paper strewn over the trees and across the roof. Those poor, poor dears!
The Muslims are so good at feeling sorry for themselves in the aftermath of their own atrocities that nobody should waste their breath or any time worrying for them. It will take more than words from 'peaceful' Muslims to convince me. Words mean nothing. Show me actions.
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