Ministers set on locking people up without charge should listen to the Muslim mainstream, not the neocon fringe, argues Seumas Milne.
Terror detention ‘a kind of modern torture’
Terror detention ‘a kind of modern torture’
By Tom Mellen
Morning Star, 8 November 2007
TWO innocent brothers who were locked up for a week under anti-terror laws urged MPs to resist the attack on civil liberties on Wednesday. In a passionate appeal to backbenchers, they described government plans to double the amount of time suspects can be detained as amounting to “modernised torture.”
Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who was shot in the chest during the infamous Forest Gate raid in June last year, urged MPs not to back plans to extend the maximum amount of time that terror suspects can be held from 28 to 58 days. Giving evidence to the home affairs select committee, Mr Kahar told them: “If you give the police more time, they do everything slower. It is just prolonging the time, it’s more modernised torture,” he warned.
His brother Abul Koyair said of his seven days of questioning in Paddington Green high-security police station in west London: “It makes you want to admit to anything they want to hear.”
Mr Kahar said that he did not regard Britain differently after his experiences but he had lost faith in the police. “The police have a difficult job, but they are putting innocent people’s lives at risk. It’s not only Muslims,” Mr Kahar said, noting that Jean Charles de Menezes wasn’t a Muslim. The threat is not only to Muslims – it’s a threat to the whole public.”
Mr Kahar warned that, “if I wasn’t as strong as I was, I could have been turned against this country. I have so much hatred towards the system, someone else could have used it in a bad way.”
What today’s Islamists want
Ibrahim El Houdaiby of IkhwanWeb.com, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website, writes:
“I find it very difficult to understand what makes Western governments, unlike civil society organisations, sceptical about engaging in healthy dialogue with moderate Islamists. I find it very difficult to understand their awkward silence in the face of ongoing violations of such activists’ human rights by their authoritarian regimes – banning them from political participation, and sending them to prisons by the hundreds. I find it even more difficult to comprehend the clear bias and lack of even-handedness illustrated by the Western silence regarding the ongoing military tribunals for moderate Islamists acquitted by civilian courts in Egypt.
“Western government officials should respond positively to the positive steps taken by moderate Islamists. By shunning dialogue with the moderate voices of political Islam, Western governments are gradually handing victory to the radicals both they and moderate Islamic politicians are keen to undermine.”
The lyrical non-terrorist
“Pity Samina Malik, the young woman who will live for the rest of her life with the consequences of a terrorism conviction simply for being a suburban shopgirl who expressed her fantasies on the internet.
“Scribbling doggerel in praise of al Qa’eda on the back of WH Smith receipts will do no more to bring about the universal caliphate then a smartarse politics student with a Che Guevara poster in his bedroom does to further guerrilla struggle in South America.
“Malik is just one of many millions of kids in every country around the world wrapped up in a flirtation with any variety of anti-establishment symbolism that comes immediately to hand. Mostly it stops at posting message on online talk boards, as it did in her case….
“Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. Yes, I am in favour of intelligence service surveillance against violent Jihadists. But what is needed is action against real terrorists, not lyrical ones. Just imagine how counter-productive Malik’s conviction is going to prove in the struggle for the hearts and minds of alienated Muslim youth.”
Dave Osler at Dave’s Part, 8 November 2007
City high-flyer sues firm over ‘Guantanamo detainee’ jibes
A City high-flyer who worked on an innovative Islamic policy for a leading British insurer has brought a claim for racism against the company after he was welcomed to the office as “Guantanamo detainee 948”.
Anwar Khan, 24, who shares his name with a Afghan man held by the Americans at the Cuban naval base since 2002, says that he was greeted on 18 September by a colleague with the words: “So they have released you from Guantanamo Bay.” When Mr Khan logged on to his computer, he opened an email with a link to the Wikipedia page for detainee 948.
Mr Khan, from central London, has now begun grievance proceedings against the Royal & Sun Alliance (R&SA) insurance company after what he describes as one of the most distressing episodes in his life. The case is the latest to involve allegations of racism at work in which Asian men and women have complained that they have been racially victimised since Britain and America launched the “war on terror”.
The terrorist threat – over-simplifying the diagnosis
To put an end to extremism we should support, rather than demonise, the organisations trying to engage with young people in a positive way, argues Anas Altikriti.
‘Take your bloody veil off’
A Muslim woman says she is scared to venture out after being ordered to take off her veil in a terrifying ordeal. Kauser Bibi was in Oldham Town Centre when she says a man began following her and asking her to take off her veil.
“I had just been to the Halifax bank when this guy started shouting ‘Oi’ at me. I just carried on walking and ignored him at first. Lots of people were there watching and no-one seemed to notice what was going on. He followed me and started shouting at me. I walked towards my car but then things got ugly.
“He kept saying ‘Take your bloody veil off – I want to see your face’. He stood in front of my car and then when I tried to reverse started kicking my car. He was really kicking the car door really hard. He was abusing me and saying all sorts of other things. I was crying and was so upset and panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”
Kauser of Blackburn who was in Oldham visiting her relatives says that passers-by then intervened and tried to pull him away but he wouldn’t listen to them. Police said a 50-year-old man from Oldham was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated damage to a vehicle and was bailed, pending further inquiries.
‘Islamism’ and ‘political Islam’ are not monolithic ideas – Tariq Ramadan
DOHA – “Islamism” and “political Islam” are not monolithic ideas and they are as diverse as other contemporary trends in the Islamic world, says a prominent Muslim scholar and intellectual from Europe.
“After 9/11 and 7/7, terminologies like radicalism, Islamism and political Islam have been widely used in West. The so called terrorism experts tend to put all ‘Islamists’ in one category,” said Dr Tariq Ramadan, President of the European Muslim Network (EMN) based in Brussels. He was delivering a lecture at the Education City yesterday on the topic “Understanding contemporary Islamic trends”.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not similar to Al Qaeda and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot be equated with Osama bin Laden, said Ramadan. We hear terms like “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims”, “moderates” and “fundamentalists”. Such terminologies remind us of the colonial attitude – “all the good are with us and all the bad are resisting us.”
These fear factory speeches are utterly self-defeating
“Monday’s pre-legislation speech by the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans … was a classic ‘frightener’, reminiscent of Alastair Campbell rolling the pitch for a headline-grabbing initiative. ‘As I speak,’ intoned Evans with full dramatic effect, ‘terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country, radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism.’ Note the sexual connotation of ‘grooming’….
“Scaring the public as an act of policy may win a few headlines but it is stupid. It worked short term in 2003 and may prop up yet another terrorism law in yesterday’s Queen’s speech, a law presumably requested by MI5. But it can only damage British liberty in the long term.
“The Blair government ruined Britain’s reputation for fair treatment among the moderate Muslims on whom stopping a tiny number of fanatics now depends. Abroad it declared wars, bombed Muslim capitals, killed civilians, and initiated a crusade for ‘western values’ among people sceptical of their virtues. At home it extended terrorism laws to make every dark-skinned Briton feel he or she is being made a scapegoat. While Britain remains adequately safe from attack, it has been at a wretched cost.”
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, 7 November 2007
Siddique lawyer faces contempt of court charge
Aamer Anwar, the human rights lawyer who represented Mohammed Atif Siddique (see here and here), is to face 3 High Court judges on a contempt of court charge in relation to remarks he made after the trial.
Aamer was reported as saying that Mohammed Siddique did not receive a fair trial and the trial took place in an “atmosphere of hostility”, also describing the trial outcome as a “tragedy for justice” and that the prosecution was “driven by the State”.
Lord Carloway said that “the statement seems to be an attack on the fairness of the trial and thus presumably an attack on the court itself”.
In sentencing Siddique to 8 years, a message was undoubtedly being sent to angry young Muslims not to step out of line. Is Aamer Anwar now about to pay the price for questioning the British state’s increasingly draconian powers?
BBC News report, 6 November 2007
See also Scotland Against Criminalising Communities open letter.