Is this really the best way to combat negative stereotyping?
Britain could face the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists, says a senior Muslim leader.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, fears that continued negative attitudes towards people of his faith could provoke a vast and angry backlash.
“There are a few bad apples in the Muslim community who are doing terrible acts and we want to root them out,” Dr Bari told The Sunday Telegraph.
“But some police officers and sections of the media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they’re all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the same.
“If that demonisation continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London,” he said. “If you attack a whole community, it becomes despondent and aggressive.”
So, for those people who think that all Muslims are terrorists, Dr. Bari’s message is: you were right all along. You are not frothing, paranoid Islamophobic bigots but astute judges of character. And by the by, I don’t know what ‘media’ Dr. Bari has been exposed to but if it the same press that I have reading then I think he will find that, when it comes to terrorist atrocities, the members of the British Fourth Estate have been tripping over each other in the headlong dash to blame everyone and anyone except Muslims.
But, quibbles aside, I am inclined to be charitable and assume that Dr. Bari sincerely wishes to repair damaged community relations and foster a mutual spirit of tolerance. However, threatening what is tantamount to civil war is unlikely to achieve such a laudable objective.
Dr. Bari is described as a “senior Muslim leader” so I suppose that makes him a representative. I only hope that he is not representative.
“If you attack a whole community, it becomes despondent and aggressive.”
“attack”?, like blowing up tube trains? Quite, but less of the despondent – most Londoners refuse to be victims. It is a shame 700,000 seem determined to be.
Maybe Mr Bari needs to realise that “people of faith” may be the ones on the receiving end of a “vast and angry backlash”. Someone needs to teach this gent that in Britain “faith” is a personal, private affair and pepole resent having it thrust into their faces 24/7.
Mr Bari is halfway there. He notes the negative effects on a community of coming under attack. Soon, he may realise that applies to non-muslims too.
He may even start to worry about terrorism and hate preaching in the name of his religion causing islamophobia, rather than blaming the media and the government.
Sounds like a threat’s little brother, doesn’t it?
Is all this worth a few interesting restaurants? Just find some place where you’ll fit in, all 2,000,000 of you.
If Brits were attacking Muslims like Muslims attack Brits, he might have a point, but the calculus of violence is extremely one sided.
Or perhaps the Brits are just too damn polite about their repression…. of all the people in the world, the British are one of a handful of societies where it can be said that politeness and civility has been fashioned into a weapon.
Of course, American hiker Marty Layman-Mendonca remains in a permanent coma in a Scottish hospital, a victim of British hospitality as well as its self defense laws….
In WW1, the Germans introduced poison gas artillery. The Brits, Yanks, French were apalled at such barbarity. But when it didn’t stop, they made some tweaks, some mass production and more German soldiers died from their countrymen’s new toy than allies.
In WW2, the Luftwaffe started bombing civilian targets in England. The Brits tried at first to respond tit for tat and not overreact. After the destruction of Coventry, the Brits took the gloves off. The result was the fire bombings of multiple German cities in which 30 – 70, 000 would perish at a time. In the end, 11,000,000 Germans died in WW2.
Lesson for Islamic goat afficianados;
DO NOT PROVOKE the west!!!!!!
When cynical British and American liberals decide their comfortable lifestyles are at risk, the gloves will come off and you will be lucky if only a remnant of the “people of faith” are left as a warning to future islamo-facsist wannabes.
As long as the majority of Muslims want peaceful coexistence, everything will be fine, quoth he. This statemnt must be true as I see and hear it on the BBC all the time. I guess that means we’ll need to see the 1,000,001st suicide bomber before anything is done about dealing with them as a mass issue rather than as individual nutters who also “happen” to be muslim.
Anyone have any idea the %age of Germans were pro-war and how many anti in 1939? Interesting to compare percentages with the current situation.
Bari has been trying to make his mark since taking over the MCB, and has been taking a notably less subtle line than his predecessor. He’s starting to come across as desperate for headlines, and one doubts he’ll be taken seriously much longer… which can only be a good thing.
I’ve been amazed (no not really) by the lack of response in the MSM to this.
This guy,the head of the main Muslim org. in the UK, is actually saying “be nicer to us or else ALL 2 million of us will become terrorists.”
Outrageous.
I’ve been amazed (no not really) by the lack of response in the MSM to this.
This guy,the head of the main Muslim org. in the UK, is actually saying “be nicer to us or else ALL 2 million of us will become terrorists.”
Outrageous.
Great, isn’t it? See, even though our fellow citizens are being butchered by islamic extremists, it’s all really our fault.
I love the twisted logic by which aggressors become victims. Bari would be well advised to clean up his house before it is done for him. I am sick and tired of hearing this coddled minority whining and I daresay that I am not alone.
Get on with life in peace, or get out of the country.
Dr Bari exemplifies the warped, false, victimology in which some Muslims love to wallow and, surpise, surprise, makes threats about future atrocities unless certain concessions are made.
No mention of course of the real victims of Islamism’s jihad and the low-level authoritarianism that keeps Islamism’s Muslim victims – particularly those Muslim women enslaved in the West’s own Muslim ghettos – submissive.
No evidence from this man’s words that he has a modicum of what for most people passes as rational, post-Enlightment, thought.
As long as muslims consider ties of religion stronger than their obligation to decency, law and order, as long as they refrain from denouncing, unmasking and turning in extremists and conspirators only because they are muslims, we are justified in having strong suspicions and antipathy toward the whole muslim community.
“When cynical British and American liberals decide their comfortable lifestyles are at risk, the gloves will come off”
the lessons of history are there for Mr Bari to see. It didnt take too long for cultured, liberal Germans to turn into Nationalist Socialists (the Great Depression was a major cause of that). And one should also remember the journey of many a Russian social democrat to full on Communist Stalinist.
That’s a shocking wig he’s got on there – it’s almost like a hat. Not seen one that bad in a while – one for the pages of Viz, I feel.
Gee, and I thought these ululating baboons, oops, downtrodden muslims, ‘invented’ mathematics.
Listen Abdul, just what precisely do you think will happen when the other 58 million of us tire of your shit?
FOAD.
TD,
You could just as well say
I’m having a hard time even imagining the mental contortions they must go through to reach that conclusion.
Robert,
You’ll get two!
Pete,
That is one hell of a toup! And I always thought carpets were one of the things the Koranimals were actually good at.
Jeez, we’re now being threatened by rug-artistes!
Exactly.
For a culture capable of manufacturing magnificent rugs (would especially recommend the Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul), that’s a disappointing effort from the weaselly apologist there.
Threats, you can always tell a statement from one of the self appointed Muslim representatives because of they will always contain a threat. Somehow the non-existent backlash to Islamist attacks means that Islamists are victims, and their supposed victimhood makes these attacks justified. Obviously by the use of the amazing Islamic time machine. There has never yet been a backlash against Islamist violence, but if it continues one day there will be. Other people can make veiled threats as well.
It is true that most of the victims of Islamofascist terrorism have been Muslim (even including the mainly Christian victims we remember today).
However, the mainstream media manage to twist every suicide bomb into somehow being the Americans fault – terrorist kills lots of Muslims in Iraq or elsewhere and it is fault of BushHitler.
As for the two to three million Muslims in Britian (as opposed to the at least six million Muslims in France) they divide into three groups.
Nominal Muslims – people for whom “being a Muslim” is not very important (either culturally or in religious terms).
Sufi Muslims (of various types) – people for whom “being a Muslim” is a mystical thing (all about the “inner light” and other such – like mystical Christians).
And scripture based Muslims – i.e. people who are Muslims in the way a person would say “I am a Protestant” (when this meant Bible based).
The third group (both Sunni and Shia) are mostly not terrorists (in the sense of actually doing anything) but they are very interested in the basic Islamic writings (the Koran and the rest) and in the life and works of Mohammed – as a real person (the battles, conquests and so on), not as a mystical abstraction (as the Sufi tradition would view Mohammed).
The relevant percentages of nominal, mystical, and text based Muslims are a moot point and vary over time.
On the specific point about women.
Nominal Muslims and mystical Muslims would be against rape (at least in theory – there would be a few criminals amongst them as amongst any group of human beings).
However, text based Muslims might tend to the view that four males must give testimony for a man to be convicted of rape (and the women to be found innocent) which means (in practice) the decriminalization of rape.
Of course some text based Muslims would claim to find justification for effective anti rape laws in the basic Islamic writings – but this (according to the majority of Islamic scholars) involves a process of quoting out of context and ignoring texts that the women’s rights people do not like.
Much in the way that some people manage to “interpret” the United States Constitution to allow the present mega government (for example, by treating the PURPOSE of the various powers granted to the Congress by Article One, Section Eight of the Constituion [the general welfare and common defence of the United Stares] as if it were a “general welfare power”).
However, in Islamic legal interpretation, such distortion of the basic texts is not the majority view.
Also the basic Islamic texts themselves are, to our Western point of view, evil.
In this we must rely on most Muslims either not valuing the texts much (as in the case of nominal Muslims) or interpreting them in a mystical way (as with the Sufi Muslims) or interpreting them by distorting the text (as with the few text based Muslims scholars who twist the text in much the same way that Western “liberals” twist the United States Constitution – with the difference that Western “liberals” are very important and Islamic dissenting scholarship is of little importance).
However, on one major point of Islamic law the terrorists do seem to be in the wrong – suicide.
Suicide is forbidden by Islamic law – which is why O.B.L. and the others do not like the term “suicide bomber”.
Both Sunni and Shia legal scholars have developed ways round the suicide prohibition – but they are clearly uncomfortable.
Even the Shia tradition of heroic last stands against vast odds, is not technically suicide (their leader was cut down by the Sunni in battle – he did not kill himself).
Of course neither Sunni or Shia mainstream scholars have any proplem with killing the enemies of Islam – and as we have not accepted the authority of Islamic rule we do not deserve the mercy accorded to people of the book under the pact of Omar.
There are some Muslims who hold that Caliph Omar was much too merciful to nonMuslim people of the book (i.e. Jews and Christians), pointing out that Mohammed himself showed far less mercy. And there are some Muslims that point out that Omar’s mercy had conditions (i.e. nonMuslims must not carry weapons, ride horses, have holy buildings larger than Muslim ones and so on).
There are even Muslims who might (in a very gentle way) imply that Mohammed was too merciful to nonMuslims (it must be remembered that, to Muslims, Mohammed was the last and greatest prophet – he was not God and was thus still capable of human error), – pointing to the old story that Mohammed was poisoned by a Jewish women he had enslaved when he conquered a Jewish town (the claim implies that he gave in to sexual feelings rather than just murdering everyone).
[In case the above is held to be “Islamophobic” I must point out that the activities of Joshua were as bad as the activities of Mohammed].
However, the debate is moot – as we have not claimed the protection of the pact of Omar and carry on our defiance of Islamic authority.
Of course the above would only bother text based Muslims.
As was rightly pointed out, there are 2,000,000 Muslims in this country, and 58,000,000 people who are beginning to get brassed off with the antics of this tiny minority.
I suggest, this being the case, that Bari should watch his f**king lip.
The world is a difficult place, full of charlatans and fools.
I do not wish to be associated with any of the follies of the Blairality.
Many citizens of the USA are not too keen on some of the actions of President Bush.
Accordingly, why should we visit upon the silent majority of UK Muslims, the less wise rantings of this guy (what’s his name)?
[Note. For the avoidance of doubt, the above, of course, says nothing in support of Muslim philosophy, nor in support of anti-Muslim philosophy: it just concerns general labelling on the basis of the less than general.]
Best regards
I don’t think you can call 2 million people a tiny minority.
Besides, 15% of the population are over 65 years old, thats 9 million people, not many of those are Muslims. They not gonna be doing much fighting.
If you were to consider only the numbers of fighting age population plus the large number of traitorous left who would join them, I don’t ‘we’ would hold such a clear advantage.
What worries me is that people with the mindset of Bari will not even understand the comments here, if they should read them.
–Accordingly, why should we visit upon the silent majority of UK Muslims, the less wise rantings of this guy (what’s his name)?—
Because he speaks for them.
The “moderate muslim” which we are assured is out there (and there are some, just too few and far inbetween) doesn’t rise up and stop this nonsense.
Freeman, in my more depressed moments, I imagine that people like Bari understand us very well. There is no real backlash to begin with (at least not yet), so what exactly is Bari asking for? It’s a threat, and he knows it’s a threat. He also knows that Western governments, mainstream media, and a great portion of the people won’t say FOAD. They’ll just twist their little hankies and murmur, “Well, some Muslims are nice” or “What did we do to make them angry?”
Having had a run-in, west of Boston, with a carful of Arab-speaking creeps the evening of 2001-9-10, I’m inclined to believe, to the core, that Islam is evil, period.
But to accept a man as extremely evil as Muhammad as a prophet — except, of course, of Iblis/Satan, a voice of evil rather than of supposed good — is to stake evil ground. So, I’d like to know if it is possible for “nominal” or “mystical” or any Muslims to believe that Muhammad is not a prophet, and yet remain Muslims in any meaningful sense of the term (not counting CYA against being murdered for having enough conscience to arrive at apostasy).
SandyP: because he speaks for them
As if they have a choice.
That aside, it is typical Islamist owl-magnet moonbattery.
First assert inverted and/or timeshifted logic, next warn people of the consequences, then carry it out on the slightest or zero pretext. Finally, blame others ‘because they were warned’.
These people are unreason writ large. No wonder they appeal to the Sandalistas.
Reckon they’ve now realised the substantial own goal of his interview. Problem for me with this attempt at “restatement” is that he said plenty of other things to support the Telegraph’s interpretation.
He’s “A” representative, very well. Let’s hear from another….
anyone, any one at all…?
Abdueller…?